Gabhart’s third Hidden Springs entry doesn’t quite have the bite of Joan Hess’ Maggody mysteries but is edgier than Meier’s...
Deputy Sheriff Michael Keane (Murder Comes by Mail, 2016, etc.) investigates a maybe-murder.
Everyone in Hidden Springs knows that the second-floor staircase in the Chandler mansion is a deathtrap. Years ago, Audrey Carlson fell to her death on those stairs. Now Michael finds realtor Geraldine Harper’s crumpled body at the bottom. It looks like another accident—only this time Michael also finds frail old Fonda Joyce Chandler Elwood, on the lam from Mrs. Gibson’s Gentle Care Home, keening over Geraldine’s corpse, claiming, “It was him.” But whether dementia-clouded Miss Fonda is confusing Geraldine with her long-dead sister, Audrey, or who on earth she means by “him,” is anyone’s guess. What Michael does know is that dispatcher Betty Jean Atkins took a 911 call reporting Geraldine’s death, which means that someone was almost certainly in the house when she died. As Michael searches for the missing witness to what may not even be a crime, a second struggle confronts him. Alexandria Sheridan, who left town for a promising career as a D.C. lawyer, returns to care for her ailing Uncle Reece. Can Michael persuade his childhood sweetheart to settle down in sleepy Hidden Springs? Past and present collide not only in Miss Fonda’s brain, but in Michael’s love life as he plows through a jumble of illusions, assumptions, and downright lies to find the truth.
Gabhart’s third Hidden Springs entry doesn’t quite have the bite of Joan Hess’ Maggody mysteries but is edgier than Meier’s Tinker’s Cove series, leaving it a serious contender in the ever growing field of small-town murder.Pub Date: March 14, 2017
ISBN: 978-0-8007-2710-9
Page Count: 352
Publisher: Revell
Review Posted Online: Jan. 22, 2017
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 1, 2017
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
These letters from some important executive Down Below, to one of the junior devils here on earth, whose job is to corrupt mortals, are witty and written in a breezy style seldom found in religious literature. The author quotes Luther, who said: "The best way to drive out the devil, if he will not yield to texts of Scripture, is to jeer and flout him, for he cannot bear scorn." This the author does most successfully, for by presenting some of our modern and not-so-modern beliefs as emanating from the devil's headquarters, he succeeds in making his reader feel like an ass for ever having believed in such ideas. This kind of presentation gives the author a tremendous advantage over the reader, however, for the more timid reader may feel a sense of guilt after putting down this book. It is a clever book, and for the clever reader, rather than the too-earnest soul.
Pub Date: Jan. 1, 1942
ISBN: 0060652934
Page Count: 53
Publisher: Macmillan
Review Posted Online: Oct. 17, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: June 15, 1943
© Copyright 2026 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.
