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
Eskens’ debut is a solid and thoughtful tale of a young man used to taking on burdens beyond his years—none more dangerous...
A struggling student’s English assignment turns into a mission to solve a 30-year-old murder.
Joe Talbert has had very few breaks in his 21 years. The son of a single and very alcoholic mother, he’s worked hard to save enough money to leave his home in Austin, Minnesota, for the University of Minnesota. Although he has to leave his autistic younger brother, Jeremy Naylor, to the dubious care of their mother, Joe is determined to beat the odds and get his degree. For an assignment in his English class, he decides to interview Carl Iverson, a man convicted of raping and killing a 14-year-old girl. Carl, who maintains his innocence, is dying of cancer and has been released to a nursing home to end his life in lonely but unrepentant pain. The more Joe learns about Carl—a Vietnam vet with two Purple Hearts and a Silver Cross—the more the young man questions the conviction. Joe’s plan to write a short biography and earn an easy A turns into something more. Even after his mother is arrested for drunk driving and guilt-trips Joe into ransacking his college fund to bail her out, he soldiers on with the project, though her irresponsibility forces him to take Jeremy into his care. But it’s his younger brother who cracks the code of the long-dead murder victim’s secret diary and an attractive neighbor, Lila Nash, who has her own agenda for helping Joe solve the mystery, whatever the risk.
Eskens’ debut is a solid and thoughtful tale of a young man used to taking on burdens beyond his years—none more dangerous than championing a bitter old man convicted of a horrific crime.Pub Date: Oct. 14, 2014
ISBN: 978-1-61614-998-7
Page Count: 300
Publisher: Seventh Street Books
Review Posted Online: Oct. 8, 2014
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Oct. 15, 2014
The writing is merely serviceable, and one can’t help but wish the author had found a way to present her material as...
An unlikely love story set amid the horrors of a Nazi death camp.
Based on real people and events, this debut novel follows Lale Sokolov, a young Slovakian Jew sent to Auschwitz in 1942. There, he assumes the heinous task of tattooing incoming Jewish prisoners with the dehumanizing numbers their SS captors use to identify them. When the Tätowierer, as he is called, meets fellow prisoner Gita Furman, 17, he is immediately smitten. Eventually, the attraction becomes mutual. Lale proves himself an operator, at once cagey and courageous: As the Tätowierer, he is granted special privileges and manages to smuggle food to starving prisoners. Through female prisoners who catalog the belongings confiscated from fellow inmates, Lale gains access to jewels, which he trades to a pair of local villagers for chocolate, medicine, and other items. Meanwhile, despite overwhelming odds, Lale and Gita are able to meet privately from time to time and become lovers. In 1944, just ahead of the arrival of Russian troops, Lale and Gita separately leave the concentration camp and experience harrowingly close calls. Suffice it to say they both survive. To her credit, the author doesn’t flinch from describing the depravity of the SS in Auschwitz and the unimaginable suffering of their victims—no gauzy evasions here, as in Boy in the Striped Pajamas. She also manages to raise, if not really explore, some trickier issues—the guilt of those Jews, like the tattooist, who survived by doing the Nazis’ bidding, in a sense betraying their fellow Jews; and the complicity of those non-Jews, like the Slovaks in Lale’s hometown, who failed to come to the aid of their beleaguered countrymen.
The writing is merely serviceable, and one can’t help but wish the author had found a way to present her material as nonfiction. Still, this is a powerful, gut-wrenching tale that is hard to shake off.Pub Date: Sept. 4, 2018
ISBN: 978-0-06-279715-5
Page Count: 272
Publisher: Harper/HarperCollins
Review Posted Online: July 16, 2018
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 1, 2018
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