A stellar recurring hero headlines this exciting and convincing whodunit.
In this mystery sequel, a reporter tries to prove that a suicide—with uncomfortably close ties to her lawyer father—is actually a murder.
Retired politician Buddy McFee is a legendary “fixer.” He uses his legal skills to help people, even with “something a tad shady.” But the Texas attorney is battling dementia, which his reporter daughter, Callie, and his longtime aide have fought to keep secret. Buddy’s latest fix has unforeseen consequences. His client Trevor Birdsong, involved in a DWI, pleads to a felony that costs him his job. Trevor, blaming Buddy for insufficient legal advice, threatens to sue but does something much worse—he kills himself. Now, Buddy fears the suicide will point back to him and ultimately expose his dementia. But if Trevor was murdered, people won’t likely focus on the victim’s lawyer. Buddy enlists Callie and his police homicide detective son, State, to look a little deeper, even to declare the cause of death “undetermined.” It all seems rather dubious until Callie has her aha moment. One clue at the scene is indeed questionable, enough to convince her someone killed Trevor. She quickly locks onto a suspect; all she needs are a motive and hard evidence, the search for which leads her to an obscure film and a possible second murder. Around the same time, Callie further complicates her life when she stumbles on a particularly unsavory skeleton in Buddy’s closet. Digging into her father’s past, along with her amateur murder investigation, puts Callie in the path of a dangerous individual—maybe a person willing to kill to keep her silent.
Conrad’s series protagonist is a believable sleuth. Callie, for example, who previously worked on a murder case in the first installment, investigates crimes using journalistic skills. She does research and utilizes various sources, such as her cop brother and the evidence he’s gathered. The author grounds the hero even further by deftly fusing the murder mystery with relatable family scenes. In one of the best moments, Callie pulls double duty—meticulously examining a key piece of evidence while babysitting State’s twin sons. This sparks an unexpected but amusing turn that ends with the kids’ parents furious at Callie. But as the narrative persistently reminds readers, she’s only human. Callie may frown at the underhanded things her father has done, but she undoubtedly loves and strives to protect Buddy. Similarly, though she went on just one date with Trevor, she initially feels guilt over his supposed suicide, as if she somehow could have prevented it. The memorable supporting cast includes perpetually reluctant-to-help State as well as Callie’s publisher boss and quasi-investigative partner, Oliver Chesney. Conrad, a TV writer and producer, enriches this mystery/thriller with unforgettable morsels of dry humor. Callie, for example, entertains herself at a memorial by “counting man buns and ponytails.” Later, when she asks Oliver for “a minute to think,” he eyes his watch. There’s thorough resolution by the novel’s end, though it does rely heavily on coincidence. Still, the ever resourceful and tenacious Callie rarely misses an opportunity to display her quick-wittedness, as when she uses technology in an unorthodox and clever way.
A stellar recurring hero headlines this exciting and convincing whodunit.Pub Date: Feb. 1, 2022
ISBN: N/A
Page Count: 303
Publisher: Mason Hill Inc
Review Posted Online: Dec. 22, 2021
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
BOOK REVIEW
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
This book and its author are cleverer than you and want you to know it.
In this mystery, the narrator constantly adds commentary on how the story is constructed.
In 1929, during the golden age of mysteries, a (real-life) writer named Ronald Knox published the “10 Commandments of Detective Fiction,” 10 rules that mystery writers should obey in order to “play fair.” When faced with his own mystery story, our narrator, an author named Ernest Cunningham who "write[s] books about how to write books," feels like he must follow these rules himself. The story seemingly begins on the night his brother Michael calls to ask him to help bury a body—and shows up with the body and a bag containing $267,000. Fast-forward three years, and Ernie’s family has gathered at a ski resort to celebrate Michael’s release from prison. The family dynamics are, to put it lightly, complicated—and that’s before a man shows up dead in the snow and Michael arrives with a coffin in a truck. When the local cop arrests Michael for the murder, things get even more complicated: There are more deaths; Michael tells a story about a coverup involving their father, who was part of a gang called the Sabers; and Ernie still has (most of) the money and isn’t sure whom to trust or what to do with it. Eventually, Ernie puts all the pieces together and gathers the (remaining) family members and various extras for the great denouement. As the plot develops, it becomes clear that there’s a pretty interesting mystery at the heart of this novel, but Stevenson’s postmodern style has Ernie constantly breaking the fourth wall to explain how the structure of his story meets the criteria for a successful detective story. Some readers are drawn to mysteries because they love the formula and logic—this one’s for them. If you like the slow, sometimes-creepy, sometimes-comforting unspooling of a good mystery, it might not be your cup of tea—though the ending, to be fair, is still something of a surprise.
This book and its author are cleverer than you and want you to know it.Pub Date: Jan. 17, 2023
ISBN: 978-0-06-327902-5
Page Count: 384
Publisher: Mariner Books
Review Posted Online: Oct. 25, 2022
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Nov. 15, 2022
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