This delightful mystery succeeds in uniting two kindred souls in need of a change.
In this novel, a man and a woman team up to solve seemingly unrelated crimes, both hoping to leave behind their ruts and find new directions for their lives.
April September and Preston Tremlock are approaching middle age with plenty of dreams but little success to show for them. April is a fledgling mystery writer collecting rejection slips while working a banking job she hates. Preston is an amateur detective loathed by the local police force that he pesters with his investigative theories. The two meet when April storms into Preston’s office at the insurance company where he has a short-term gig. Despite such an antagonistic beginning, they discover they both love mysteries. Although she’s engaged, April agrees to go out for coffee with him after he returns her notebook, which she had lost. Their big break comes when April’s bank is robbed by a trio of Santas, after which millions of dollars disappear. The insurance company, which has fired Preston, offers a $250,000 reward for whomever discovers the missing money. April quits her job and proposes to Preston that they combine their resources by moving in together, focusing on finding the cash (“We’re going to collect that reward. Plus I’m going to write about it and sell it”). April decides Preston is gay without ever confirming that. Together, they forge ahead blithely, ignoring danger, toward a brighter future. In this charming mystery, veteran screenwriter Olek has created a memorable pair in April and Preston. Both think they’re the smartest people in any room, which leads to frequent clashes between them. Later, the fact that Preston isn’t actually gay results in more bumps in their road. But their deductive powers and analytical skills are ideal for the task at hand. Their unorthodox methods and willingness to skirt legalities leave them far ahead of the local cops. As a result, the police fail to uncover the bank theft’s important connection to some murders. Olek’s engaging narrative flies along with April and Preston as they careen from one false lead to another, unbothered by failure. They’re a winning combination, hopefully one that the author will bring back for another case.
This delightful mystery succeeds in uniting two kindred souls in need of a change.Pub Date: Oct. 11, 2022
ISBN: 9798838416575
Page Count: 376
Publisher: Self
Review Posted Online: Jan. 18, 2023
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 15, 2023
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
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
More than any of his earlier cases, the comatose hero’s 26th adventure bears the hallmarks of a formal detective story.
Wyoming Game and Fish Warden Joe Pickett has been shot plenty of times before. But this time may be the last.
As Joe hovers between life and death in a Billings hospital, Box indicates that Dorn Peddy and James Dale O’Bryan are the two men who ambushed him, shot him, and left him for dead. But he doesn’t reveal who hired them or why. That’s left up to Joe’s three daughters: bird-abatement firm chief executive Sheridan, Bozeman private eye April, and University of Wyoming undergrad Lucy. Since the man who reported the incident to the Twelve Sleep County Sheriff’s Department has disappeared, the most that newly appointed Sheriff Steve Sondergard can do is to warn Sheridan and her sisters away from the case. But the fact that both the shooters and the witness seem to have come from one of exactly three places presents an obvious appeal to the younger Picketts, who plan to each visit one place and question the owners simultaneously before they can warn each other that anyone’s coming. The only problem is that all the possible suspects—billionaire Michael Thompson and his wife, Brandy, of the Double Diamond Ranch; ranchers John and Shelby Bucholz, of the Bucholz Cattle Company; and secretive sisters Lisa and Lainie McElwee, of McElwee Land and Cattle Ranch—act equally guilty. As Box unspools a series of flashbacks showing what Joe was up to in the weeks before the ambush, one question assumes paramount importance: Can Joe’s daughters identify which of them is behind the plot to murder their father before the hired gunmen visit the hospital and try again?
More than any of his earlier cases, the comatose hero’s 26th adventure bears the hallmarks of a formal detective story.Pub Date: Feb. 24, 2026
ISBN: 9780593851098
Page Count: 352
Publisher: Putnam
Review Posted Online: Nov. 22, 2025
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 1, 2026
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