A captivating murder tale set in small-town Massachusetts.
In this seventeenth installment of a mystery series, the hunt for a killer sends a sleuthing duo of journalists into peril in New England.
Ickler’s tale features St. Paul, Minnesota, journalist Warren “Mitch” Mitchell and his trusty colleague Alan Jeffrey, a photojournalist. In the series, this duo tends to stay close to the Minneapolis area, but sometimes they venture far afield. In this latest mystery, the two are dispatched by their paper to a small Massachusetts town called Hopedale, where a professor has vanished. Pinchas Butz had been studying a 19th-century utopian community when he disappeared. As usually happens, Mitch and Al are drawn in to investigating the event instead of merely reporting on it. That probe becomes much more complicated when the professor’s body is found and reveals the activity of a savage murderer at large. The two stars of the Daily Dispatch staff soon find themselves deeply entangled in an ongoing mystery that may or may not be connected to the enigmatic figure who seems to be stalking Mitch’s redoubtable wife, Martha, back in Minnesota. Readers will be struck almost immediately by the smooth professionalism of Ickler’s execution. He lays out the classic elements of a murder mystery—engaging secondary characters, intriguing history, sharp dialogue—in a fast-paced, entertaining narrative that only occasionally veers into clichés (“bright-eyed and bushy-tailed”; “on the tip of my tongue”). In this series, the author presents himself with a central logistical problem—Mitch and Al are not law enforcement officers—and he believably overcomes this hurdle with low-key humor and well-done characterizations. At the center of the action are Mitch and Al, nuanced, seasoned professionals and convincing charmers.
A captivating murder tale set in small-town Massachusetts.Pub Date: Nov. 29, 2022
ISBN: 9781977259806
Page Count: 278
Publisher: Outskirts Press
Review Posted Online: Feb. 16, 2023
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
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
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