A high-concept romp that’s barely dated, despite that slur and all those footnotes.
The first of resident manager Pierre Chambrun’s 22 adventures in New York’s luxurious Hotel Beaumont, originally published in 1962, gives him exactly a week to find a killer before he (or she) strikes.
He may be famous and successful and wealthy and a Pulitzer and Nobel Prize laureate, but everybody hates Aubrey Moon, the writer, socialite, and Great Man who plans to spend $30,000 to entertain 250 guests at the 75th birthday party he’s throwing himself next weekend. The question is: Who hates him enough to have offered Pamela Prym, the call girl in Room 609, $10,000 if she’d kill him before the party—and to have threatened her with instant death if she took the money but didn’t carry out the mission? It’s too late to ask Pamela, because she’s hanged herself in her room. Incredibly, though, her correspondent makes the same offer to John Wills, who already has ample reason to kill the man who caused his own father’s suicide. John, who’s booked a room in the hotel and wangled an introduction to Chambrun on the grounds that he’s learning the hotel business—a cover story that doesn’t fool the wily manager—doesn’t want a murder on his conscience but isn’t in a position to return the payoff and doesn’t want to be killed either. More than whodunit, the question of what-to-do-about-it drives this ebullient franchise debut by pseudonymous mystery veteran Judson Philips (1903–89). Editor Leslie S. Klinger supplies conscientious footnotes that describe how to make dry martinis, identify Judy Garland and Toto, explain what a call girl is, and note that the phrase “a pansy inflection” is “an unfortunate anti-homosexual slur.”
A high-concept romp that’s barely dated, despite that slur and all those footnotes.Pub Date: Dec. 9, 2025
ISBN: 9781464244728
Page Count: 224
Publisher: Poisoned Pen
Review Posted Online: Oct. 10, 2025
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Nov. 15, 2025
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
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