A compelling, complex protagonist in a sultry, engaging, and lyrical, albeit disturbing, mystery.
In the sixth volume of a mystery series, dramatically set against the exuberant delights and eccentricities of New Orleans, a woman’s dark past is finally revealed.
The continuing saga of Jeff Chaussier and his stunning wife, Bryna Boudreaux, picks up several months after the explosive conclusion of the fifth installment. Bryna has given birth to a beautiful little girl, but upon seeing the baby, she suffers a mental breakdown. Convinced the infant is not hers, she accuses Jeff of all sorts of diabolical machinations. He brings the baby home, where his mother and surrogate second grandmother, Miz Rhonda, alternate caring for her. While Jeff is grieving, Bryna is receiving highly unorthodox “treatment” from disreputable therapist “That Bastard Henry.” But as fans of the series know, Jeff’s vast and entertainingly quirky assortment of family and friends will not allow Sanchez’s angst-driven, reluctant hero to languish for long. Jeff is quickly pulled back into the search for the anonymous, powerful “megalomaniac” behind the constant attempts to destroy Bryna. As Jeff repeats every chance he gets, he is an actor, currently working in a local theater owned and managed by his friend and mentor Don, who has his own scheme to pull the hero out of his emotional paralysis. Enter Rita, Jeff’s first love, back to tempt him into a new romance. The magic of New Orleans—the sights, sounds, aromas, tastes, colors, and music that poetically infuse the author’s Crescent City—is here, but there is far less violence and page-turning action this time around. The developing relationship between Jeff and Rita and the investigation into Bryna’s past amble at a languid pace until the high-octane conclusion. As always, it is great fun to spend time with Jeff given his love of words, passion for literary references, and snarky, often self-deprecating humor. But new readers are advised to begin with the earlier novels to best appreciate the many secondary characters in this enjoyable, melancholy story. This may—or may not—be the series closer. Sanchez offers a final tantalizing wink, but no promises, in his concluding author’s note.
A compelling, complex protagonist in a sultry, engaging, and lyrical, albeit disturbing, mystery.Pub Date: April 11, 2021
ISBN: 979-8-63-628315-7
Page Count: 267
Publisher: Self
Review Posted Online: Feb. 4, 2021
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
BOOK REVIEW
A satisfying thriller that will warm the hearts of fans who already take comfort in hating the forces of evil.
Lt. Eve Dallas’ 63rd futuristic case is less a whodunit than a manhunt for an unusually sympathetic killer.
Thirteen years ago, way back in 2048, scientific genius Steve Redman—father of the Banner-Wyst corporation’s Rainmaker Project—narrowly escaped death in a gas explosion that killed his pregnant wife and infant son and 200 other residents of their New York City apartment building the night before he planned to report his suspicions about the company to the FBI. Now the bill is coming due for Banner-Wyst. The first death to be discovered is that of Lawrence Chu, Redman’s colleague and trusted friend, whose tenure as director of bioengineering science ends when he’s beaten to death. For quite a while, Dallas and her partner, Det. Delia Peabody, know less about this mystery than their readers do. But when Ezra Dent, a consultant to Banner-Wyst who worked with Redman and Chu back in the day, is murdered in exactly the same ferocious way, Dallas and Peabody, with help from Roarke, Dallas’ tech-billionaire husband, promptly put the pieces together and determine who they’re looking for. The search for Redman, who went AWOL from his hospital bed without a trace six years ago, has its own challenges. So does Dallas’ attempt to get cooperation from partners Calvin Banner and Jacob Wyst, who are clearly in the crosshairs of a killer who seems a lot less monstrous than they are. If the breaks in the case are suspiciously convenient in arriving, readers can pride themselves on taking sides against a mega-corporation whose self-avowed ecological saintliness is undermined by its leaders’ underhanded dealing.
A satisfying thriller that will warm the hearts of fans who already take comfort in hating the forces of evil.Pub Date: Sept. 8, 2026
ISBN: 9781250414564
Page Count: 368
Publisher: St. Martin's
Review Posted Online: May 18, 2026
Kirkus Reviews Issue: June 15, 2026
The delightful debut of a classic, prolific detective.
It takes a quirky sleuth to solve a baffling closed-door murder.
The author himself or, more accurately, some version of him, walks the reader through a “gruesome murder” that occurred in a rural farming village. At the center of the crime is the wealthy Ichiyanagi family, including the widow Itoko and her five children. The “heinous crime” occurs in the evening after the festive wedding of eldest son Kenzo to schoolteacher Katsuko. Yokomizo, part narrator and part raconteur, liberally shares digressions such as the fact that his favorite British author is A.A. Milne, who wrote The Red House Mystery as well as the books about Winnie-the-Pooh. Written in 1946 but set in 1937 before the devastation of World War II, this is the first novel featuring Kosuke Kindaichi, the legendary detective who appeared in more than 70 stories by Yokomizo. If Yokomizo is the Japanese Agatha Christie, Kindaichi may seem the Japanese Hercule Poirot—although actually, given his unkempt hair and apparently distracted manner, he’s more a cross between Poirot and Columbo. Shrewdly, his entrance is delayed until midway through the novel, after the police have stalled and both the family and the reader are anxious for a solution. The narrator’s garrulous charm, in a mystery long on logistics and forensic clues but short on detailed character portraits or extended interactions, is a key to the novel’s success, leavening the more intricate pieces of the puzzle. Armchair detectives will welcome the helpful character list that precedes the story.
The delightful debut of a classic, prolific detective.Pub Date: Sept. 15, 2026
ISBN: 9781805336549
Page Count: 192
Publisher: Pushkin Vertigo
Review Posted Online: July 20, 2026
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 15, 2026
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
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