A well-paced and quirky love letter to classic crime fiction.
In the second installment of Krummenacker’s Forever Detective series, a private investigator looks into a 20-year-old murder while also adjusting to his new life as a vampire.
In the summer of 1947, Rafael Jones, a former cop and now a P.I., is hired by his friend Jimmy Clarke to debunk a rumor that the upstate New York family home Jimmy recently inherited is haunted, so that he can more easily sell the property. The rumor, however, is shown to be true when Rafael wakes up to a gruesome sight: a ghostly reenactment of a woman’s murder. He’s no stranger to the supernatural; a few months before, he was turned into a vampire himself. He knows that to help the woman’s spirit move on, he must identify her killer and bring him to justice. After establishing a friendly, albeit limited, rapport with the woman’s ghost through music, and with the help of clairvoyant Methuselah “Medium” Brown, he learns that her name is Phoebe Travers and that she was killed in 1925 by an ex-boyfriend who was the father of her child—a mobster named Lorenzo Russo. Rafael, with the help of friends, former police colleagues, and long-distance girlfriend Clara Thomas, gets to work tracking down Russo, finding new evidence, and going head-to-head with the mob. As he investigates, he teaches himself how to control his new vampiric abilities and use them to his advantage—all while resisting the urge to bite someone. In this sequel to Forever’s Too Long(2019), Krummenacker presents a highly entertaining paranormal murder mystery. Rafael is a smart, compassionate protagonist who narrates his story with wry humor, especially when it comes to his vampiric condition: “It was nice to be sitting next to a pretty woman without feeling an itch around my teeth,” he says during his first interaction with Phoebe’s ghost. The cast of characters is impressively diverse and well developed, and the story moves quickly while offering sharp and detailed descriptions. Fans of vintage detective stories will enjoy this novel’s supernatural twist on a genre full of gruff detectives, organized crime, and femmes fatales.
A well-paced and quirky love letter to classic crime fiction.Pub Date: Nov. 27, 2019
ISBN: 978-1705351147
Page Count: 283
Publisher: Independently Published
Review Posted Online: Feb. 6, 2024
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
BOOK REVIEW
A fresh and clever whodunit with an engaging twist.
A 16-year-old savant uses his Groundhog Day gift to solve his grandfather’s murder.
Nishizawa’s compulsively readable puzzle opens with the discovery of the victim, patriarch Reijiro Fuchigami, sprawled on a futon in the attic of his elegant mansion, where his family has gathered for a consequential announcement about his estate. The weapon seems to be a copper vase lying nearby. Given this setup, the novel might have proceeded as a traditional whodunit but for two delightful features. The first is the ebullient narration of Fuchigami’s youngest grandson, Hisataro, thrust into the role of an investigator with more dedication than finesse. The second is Nishizawa’s clever premise: The 16-year-old Hisataro has lived ever since birth with a condition that occasionally has him falling into a time loop that he calls "the Trap," replaying the same 24 hours of his life exactly nine times before moving on. And, of course, the murder takes place on the first day of one of these loops. Can he solve the murder before the cycle is played out? His initial strategies—never leaving his grandfather’s side, focusing on specific suspects, hiding in order to observe them all—fall frustratingly short. Hisataro’s comical anxiety rises with every failed attempt to identify the culprit. It’s only when he steps back and examines all the evidence that he discovers the solution. First published in 1995, this is the first of Nishizawa’s novels to be translated into English. As for Hisataro, he ultimately concludes that his condition is not a burden but a gift: “Time’s spiral never ends.”
A fresh and clever whodunit with an engaging twist.Pub Date: July 29, 2025
ISBN: 9781805335436
Page Count: 288
Publisher: Pushkin Vertigo
Review Posted Online: July 4, 2025
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 1, 2025
A top-class cozy infused with dry wit and charming characters who draw you in and leave you wanting more, please.
Four residents of Coopers Chase, a British retirement village, compete with the police to solve a murder in this debut novel.
The Thursday Murder Club started out with a group of septuagenarians working on old murder cases culled from the files of club founder Elizabeth Best’s friend Penny Gray, a former police officer who's now comatose in the village's nursing home. Elizabeth used to have an unspecified job, possibly as a spy, that has left her with a large network of helpful sources. Joyce Meadowcroft is a former nurse who chronicles their deeds. Psychiatrist Ibrahim Arif and well-known political firebrand Ron Ritchie complete the group. They charm Police Constable Donna De Freitas, who, visiting to give a talk on safety at Coopers Chase, finds the residents sharp as tacks. Built with drug money on the grounds of a convent, Coopers Chase is a high-end development conceived by loathsome Ian Ventham and maintained by dangerous crook Tony Curran, who’s about to be fired and replaced with wary but willing Bogdan Jankowski. Ventham has big plans for the future—as soon as he’s removed the nuns' bodies from the cemetery. When Curran is murdered, DCI Chris Hudson gets the case, but Elizabeth uses her influence to get the ambitious De Freitas included, giving the Thursday Club a police source. What follows is a fascinating primer in detection as British TV personality Osman allows the members to use their diverse skills to solve a series of interconnected crimes.
A top-class cozy infused with dry wit and charming characters who draw you in and leave you wanting more, please.Pub Date: Sept. 22, 2020
ISBN: 978-1-98-488096-3
Page Count: 368
Publisher: Pamela Dorman/Viking
Review Posted Online: June 30, 2020
Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 15, 2020
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