A sexy, edgy, entertaining, and frequently dark tale with a temptingly eccentric Crescent City backdrop.
In this fifth installment of a mystery series, an actor and his beloved fiancee return to New Orleans to marry, only to discover that enigmatic evil forces are still threatening them.
In Sanchez’s Big Easy, family and close friendships are everything and drama is everywhere, which is especially appropriate considering his star character, Jeff Chaussier, is an actor. This volume opens with a wedding scene filled with riotous colors and the full complement of quirky characters who have populated the author’s earlier novels. The church is overflowing with flowers. The beautiful bridesmaids, who just happen to be female impersonators from the Cupcake lounge, are crying loudly, when finally “the shimmering snow sculpture that was Bryna” walks down the aisle to take Jeff’s hand in front of the altar. As they are about to say their vows, she turns, tears streaming down her face, and runs out to the street into a waiting car. The groom is crying and the bride is missing, but the wild “Irish Channel” celebration continues well into the night. Despite the frivolity—and there is plenty—the aborted wedding is a foreboding of all the trouble that still lies ahead for the duo. But first, Jeff and Bryna get to enjoy a sex-infused, extended pre-honeymoon, frolicking on a deserted Bahamian island, while his five brothers and assorted compatriots confer about who could be behind the endless stream of assassins doggedly devoted to murder and mayhem. Unfortunately, it is decided that Jeff is needed back in New Orleans to help flush out the coterie of evildoers. Fans of the series have a distinct advantage over newcomers, who may need a score card to keep track of all the players. But Sanchez does eventually fill in many of the complicated backstories. Secret forays through the swamps and bayous outside of New Orleans and a hefty dose of violence keep the adrenalin-pumping action steady. Jeff’s self-deprecating narration, although occasionally repetitive, is engaging, philosophical, and often touching. The explosive final chapters demand another installment.
A sexy, edgy, entertaining, and frequently dark tale with a temptingly eccentric Crescent City backdrop.Pub Date: July 26, 2019
ISBN: 978-1-08-094055-4
Page Count: 260
Publisher: Self
Review Posted Online: March 19, 2020
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
As the prosecutor sadly observes: “All this because of a dead buffalo.”
Idyllic Catalina Island turns out to be just as crime infested as the rest of Los Angeles County in the latest series launch by the creator of Harry Bosch, Renée Ballard, and the Lincoln Lawyer.
Det. Sgt. Stilwell has been bounced off the county homicide squad and rusticized to Catalina, where the exclusive Black Marlin Club won’t admit even four-term Avalon Mayor Doug Allen to full membership and the most serious infraction seems to be the killing and cutting up of a buffalo, presumably by Henry Gaston, who operates Island Mystery Tours when he’s not threatening endangered species. All that changes with the discovery of a body sunk in the surrounding waters. The corpse, most recognizable by its streak of purple hair, is that of Leigh-Anne Moss, a Black Marlin server recently fired for fraternizing with members and guests she sees as potential sugar daddies. Stilwell is sufficiently invested in her murder to compete vigorously over jurisdiction with Rex Ahearn, the LA County homicide detective who kept his job when Stilwell lost his. Their rivalry, fueled by mutual contempt, is only the first hint that Stilwell will end up fighting his counterparts in law enforcement and local government at least as hard as he fights crooks like hit man Merris Spivak and Oscar “Baby Head” Terranova, Henry’s boss, who comes under sharper scrutiny when Henry disappears and ends up dead himself. Connelly handles his hero’s obligatory romance with assistant harbormaster Tash Dano and his increasingly wary alliance with assistant D.A. Monika Juarez with equal professionalism, and if the wrap-up leaves some loose ends dangling, well, that’s what franchises are for.
As the prosecutor sadly observes: “All this because of a dead buffalo.”Pub Date: May 20, 2025
ISBN: 9780316588485
Page Count: 352
Publisher: Little, Brown
Review Posted Online: April 19, 2025
Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 15, 2025
Forget about solving all these crimes; the signal triumph here is (spoiler) the heroine’s survival.
Another sweltering month in Charlotte, another boatload of mysteries past and present for overworked, overstressed forensic anthropologist Temperance Brennan.
A week after the night she chases but fails to catch a mysterious trespasser outside her town house, some unknown party texts Tempe four images of a corpse that looks as if it’s been chewed by wild hogs, because it has been. Showboat Medical Examiner Margot Heavner makes it clear that, breaking with her department’s earlier practice (The Bone Collection, 2016, etc.), she has no intention of calling in Tempe as a consultant and promptly identifies the faceless body herself as that of a young Asian man. Nettled by several errors in Heavner’s analysis, and even more by her willingness to share the gory details at a press conference, Tempe launches her own investigation, which is not so much off the books as against the books. Heavner isn’t exactly mollified when Tempe, aided by retired police detective Skinny Slidell and a host of experts, puts a name to the dead man. But the hints of other crimes Tempe’s identification uncovers, particularly crimes against children, spur her on to redouble her efforts despite the new M.E.’s splenetic outbursts. Before he died, it seems, Felix Vodyanov was linked to a passenger ferry that sank in 1994, an even earlier U.S. government project to research biological agents that could control human behavior, the hinky spiritual retreat Sparkling Waters, the dark web site DeepUnder, and the disappearances of at least four schoolchildren, two of whom have also turned up dead. And why on earth was Vodyanov carrying Tempe’s own contact information? The mounting evidence of ever more and ever worse skulduggery will pull Tempe deeper and deeper down what even she sees as a rabbit hole before she confronts a ringleader implicated in “Drugs. Fraud. Breaking and entering. Arson. Kidnapping. How does attempted murder sound?”
Forget about solving all these crimes; the signal triumph here is (spoiler) the heroine’s survival.Pub Date: March 17, 2020
ISBN: 978-1-9821-3888-2
Page Count: 352
Publisher: Scribner
Review Posted Online: Dec. 22, 2019
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 15, 2020
© Copyright 2025 Kirkus Media LLC. All Rights Reserved.
Follow
Popular in this Genre
We can’t wait for you to join Kirkus!
It’s free and takes less than 10 seconds!
Already have an account? Log in.
OR
Sign in with GoogleTrouble signing in? Retrieve credentials.
Welcome Back!
OR
Sign in with GoogleTrouble signing in? Retrieve credentials.
