More an offbeat love story than a rip-roaring adventure but fun, with another sequel promised.
In the seventh volume of Sanchez’s Jeff Chaussier New Orleans Mystery series, the saga of Jeff and Bryna continues for another round of chaos and life-threatening adventure.
In this ever more complex soap opera, Jeff, devoted son of New Orleans, is now living in New York with his beautiful de facto wife, Rita Edwards. Yes, he is still married to his soul mate, Bryna Boudreaux, but life is complicated. Everyone has decided it’s best for his children (two with Bryna and one with Rita) to be raised up North because Bryna’s mental stability is still compromised. Jeff has given up acting and has turned to writing. Rita is a working actress, and Jeff is content as a stay-at-home dad. As the story opens, it appears that Jeff and Rita are vacationing at a beach resort. Then Bryna phones. She has been receiving enigmatic threats, and she needs Jeff’s help—the kind of help and commitment her current “roommate,” Harry/Harriet cannot offer. Seasoned followers of the series are likely to be shaking their heads at this turn of events. New readers are advised to read earlier volumes to get a better sense of the eccentric cast. Sanchez fills in some background, but this episode is best for those who have been waiting to find out what happens next. Jeff has issues with Harriet beyond the fact that she has been sleeping with Bryna. He suspects that this mysterious owner of an art gallery has ulterior motives, like everyone who has used Bryna in the past. This is just one of the quirky relationships in Sanchez’s latest episode. And despite a few well-choreographed action scenes, unconventional relationships are at the heart of this sexy installment. Bryna and Rita form a sisterly bond even as each of them is in love with Jeff. For his part, our perpetually conflicted lead character, who is the articulate, pleasantly sardonic narrator of the tale, loves Rita but will always be in love with Bryna.
More an offbeat love story than a rip-roaring adventure but fun, with another sequel promised.Pub Date: Aug. 13, 2021
ISBN: 979-8-67-415434-1
Page Count: 294
Publisher: Southern Girl Press
Review Posted Online: Oct. 8, 2021
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
BOOK REVIEW
Don’t feel that your current news feed is disturbing enough? Penny has just what you need.
A sequel to The Grey Wolf (2024) that begins with the earlier novel’s last line: “We have a problem.” And what a problem it is.
Now that Chief Inspector Armand Gamache and his allies in and out of the Sûreté du Québec have saved Canada’s water supply from poisoning on a grand scale, you might think they were entitled to some rest and relaxation in Three Pines. No such luck. Don Joseph Moretti, the Sixth Family head who ordered the hit-and-run on biologist Charles Langlois that nearly killed Gamache as well, is plotting still more criminal enterprises, and Gamache can’t be sure that Chief Inspector Evelyn Tardiff, who’s been cozying up to Moretti in order to get the goods on him, hasn’t gone over to the dark side herself. In fact, Gamache’s uncertainty about Evelyn sets the pattern for much of what follows, for another review of one of Langlois’ notebooks reveals a plot so monstrous that it’s impossible to be sure who’s not in on it. Is it really true, as paranoid online rumors have it, that “Canada is about to attack the U.S.”? Or is it really the other way around, as the discovery of War Plan Red would have it? As the threats loom larger and larger, they raise questions as to whether the Black Wolf, the evil power behind them, is Moretti, disgraced former Deputy Prime Minister Marcus Lauzon, whom Gamache has arranged to have released from prison, or someone even more highly placed. A brief introductory note dating Penny’s delivery of the uncannily prophetic manuscript to September 2024 will do little to assuage the anxieties of concerned readers.
Don’t feel that your current news feed is disturbing enough? Penny has just what you need.Pub Date: Oct. 28, 2025
ISBN: 9781250328175
Page Count: 384
Publisher: Minotaur
Review Posted Online: July 17, 2025
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 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
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