An appealing sleuth headlines a solid thriller with panache.
A Texas lawyer fights to protect her client’s valuable artworks—and solve the woman’s murder—in this seventh installment of a mystery series.
When Ellie Windom misses an appointment, attorney Alice Greer drives to her client’s home to check on her. She’s surprised to see Ellie’s horse inside the house, then discovers the 73-year-old widow’s body as well. Ellie had been pondering her will—what to leave her two sons and the daughter she gave up for adoption more than 50 years ago. As the woman’s executor, Alice, inventorying Ellie’s other home in Santa Fe, New Mexico, unearths a box stuffed with an artist’s prints. Apparently, someone thinks the prints are valuable, as Alice narrowly dodges intruders at the home and makes a tense drive back to Texas with the artworks. The lawyer now has her hands full; she’s dealing with Ellie’s sons, who have long feuded over their inheritance, making either one the woman’s possible killer. In settling the estate, Alice connects with Ellie’s birth daughter and the child’s father, Roger Preyer. But things get even more complicated when it seems someone, for whatever reason, is trying to kill Roger. Foster’s hero is, as always, whip-smart and affable. Alice skillfully manages her eternally busy professional and personal lives; in the midst of her amateur murder investigation, she defends the local library against a lawsuit that seeks to ban Harry Potter books. Many supporting characters are as likable as Alice, including her boyfriend, Ben Kinsear, and his daughters, who don’t think twice about chasing down potentially dangerous criminals. The taut mystery delivers a handful of twists and doesn’t make identifying the culprit easy. But the suspense is even better, with Alice’s Santa Fe trips exceptional set pieces. These entail nerve-wracking searches in a dusty attic with only a flashlight beam and noises that may or may not indicate that someone else is in the house.
An appealing sleuth headlines a solid thriller with panache.Pub Date: June 15, 2021
ISBN: 978-1-73272-291-0
Page Count: 342
Publisher: Stuart's Creek Press, LLC
Review Posted Online: Aug. 21, 2021
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
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
© 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.
