Who needs 101 possessions when you’ve got Waldo’s savvy, grit, and luck?
In his third outing, stuff-averse ex–LAPD detective Charlie Waldo is stuck with two cases he also doesn’t want.
Drug trafficker Don Q, who’s troubled Waldo’s sleep before, wants to know who the John Doe fished from a city fountain was and how he died. (And no, he’s not saying why he needs to know.) Waldo’s not interested, but Don Q makes him an offer he can’t refuse. So, in her own way, does his lover, private eye Lorena Nascimento, whose price for letting Waldo say he’s working for her so he can dig up information on the dead man everyone knew as the Professor is to help manage her latest client, foulmouthed TV judge Ida Mudge, who wants Lorena and her hapless operatives to dig up all the dirt they can on Immanuel Nickerson, the ex-lover who served as Mudge’s Bailiff Man until his contract wasn’t renewed and he filed suit for sexual harassment, and the four other men who’ve joined the suit. The first mystery isn’t interesting enough to be worth all the frustration, but the second, which eventually leads Waldo to reopen the case of Anthony Branch, a long-dead college friend of both Mudge and her high-powered lawyer, Fontella Davis, produces a steady stream of backstory complications, amusing episodes, and climactic surprises. A special highlight comes when Waldo’s determination not to own more than 100 objects is sorely tested: He has to come up with seven things to jettison on the spot in order to buy a six-pack of beer for Pete Conady, the former LAPD colleague whose help he sorely needs.
Who needs 101 possessions when you’ve got Waldo’s savvy, grit, and luck?Pub Date: Dec. 7, 2021
ISBN: 978-0-7278-5085-0
Page Count: 224
Publisher: Severn House
Review Posted Online: Sept. 14, 2021
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Oct. 1, 2021
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK TO SCREEN
Although it lacks the surgical precision of Slaughter’s very best nightmares, this one richly earns its title.
More than a decade after a Georgia man is convicted of a monstrous double murder, an uncomfortably similar crime frees him and resets the search for the guilty party.
In Clifton County, home to the Rich Cliftons and the other Cliftons, the disappearance of teens Madison Dalrymple and Cheyenne Baker during the Halloween festivities hits everyone in North Falls hard. Working with her father, Sheriff Gerald Clifton, Deputy Emmy Lou Clifton hears the clock ticking down as she races frantically to get leads on the two friends, who’d been secretly plotting to take off for Atlanta after some undisclosed big score. As a longtime friend of Madison’s mother, Hannah, Emmy hopes against hope to find the missing teens before they’re both dead. By the time Emmy’s hopes are dashed, two unpleasantly likely suspects with strong attachments to underage sex partners have emerged, and one of them ends up in prison. In a bold move, Slaughter jumps over the next 12 years to the case of Paisley Walker, a 14-year-old whose disappearance catches the eye of retiring FBI criminal psychologist Jude Archer, who promptly crosses the country to come to Clifton County and take charge—um, that is, consult—on this heartrending new investigation. Emmy, suddenly and shockingly deprived of counsel from the parents who’ve supported her all her life, doesn’t get along any better with Jude than with the larger circle of Cliftons and the Clifton-Cliftons. But together they identify one new suspect, then another, before a shootout that arrives so early you just know there are still more surprises to come.
Although it lacks the surgical precision of Slaughter’s very best nightmares, this one richly earns its title.Pub Date: Aug. 12, 2025
ISBN: 9780063336773
Page Count: 448
Publisher: Morrow/HarperCollins
Review Posted Online: May 16, 2025
Kirkus Reviews Issue: June 15, 2025
Amateurish, with a twist savvy readers will see coming from a mile away.
A woman accused of shooting her husband six times in the face refuses to speak.
"Alicia Berenson was thirty-three years old when she killed her husband. They had been married for seven years. They were both artists—Alicia was a painter, and Gabriel was a well-known fashion photographer." Michaelides' debut is narrated in the voice of psychotherapist Theo Faber, who applies for a job at the institution where Alicia is incarcerated because he's fascinated with her case and believes he will be able to get her to talk. The narration of the increasingly unrealistic events that follow is interwoven with excerpts from Alicia's diary. Ah, yes, the old interwoven diary trick. When you read Alicia's diary you'll conclude the woman could well have been a novelist instead of a painter because it contains page after page of detailed dialogue, scenes, and conversations quite unlike those in any journal you've ever seen. " 'What's the matter?' 'I can't talk about it on the phone, I need to see you.' 'It's just—I'm not sure I can make it up to Cambridge at the minute.' 'I'll come to you. This afternoon. Okay?' Something in Paul's voice made me agree without thinking about it. He sounded desperate. 'Okay. Are you sure you can't tell me about it now?' 'I'll see you later.' Paul hung up." Wouldn't all this appear in a diary as "Paul wouldn't tell me what was wrong"? An even more improbable entry is the one that pins the tail on the killer. While much of the book is clumsy, contrived, and silly, it is while reading passages of the diary that one may actually find oneself laughing out loud.
Amateurish, with a twist savvy readers will see coming from a mile away.Pub Date: Feb. 5, 2019
ISBN: 978-1-250-30169-7
Page Count: 304
Publisher: Celadon Books
Review Posted Online: Nov. 3, 2018
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Nov. 15, 2018
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
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