Thoft (Loyalty, 2013) doesn’t hold back on her gutsy detective’s flaws or on irrelevant side trips. But Fina’s second outing...
A free-wheeling Boston private eye learns the unintended consequences of charitable donations.
Fina Ludlow lives on diet soda and junk, wins no prizes for housekeeping, juggles two part-time lovers, has an iffy relationship with the truth and prefers the streets to the conference room of her family’s prestigious law firm. Her father doesn’t approve of her, but he does find her talents useful, especially when she does some sleuthing for a client who’s suing Heritage Cryobank to learn the identity of her daughter’s sperm donor. Fina spares no effort (not all of it strictly legal) to out the father, Hank Reardon, a high-tech billionaire with a son by his first marriage, a daughter by his second and the offspring of some impulsive contributions to Heritage shortly after his college graduation. Although he offers to do right by his recently discovered issue, someone’s unhappy enough to bludgeon him to death in the parking lot of his company. When Michael Reardon hires Fina to find out who killed his father, she has to determine why two of his cryokids have phony alibis, how angry Hank’s partner was about being left out of a lucrative waterfront deal, why Hank’s former wife and current wife have dueling charities in the Boston area, and why, just before his death, Hank made several phone calls to the director of Heritage. In spite of warnings that grow increasingly physical, Fina won’t give up in a whodunit that maddeningly builds up momentum and then jams on the brakes to describe the hair and eye color of even minor characters or Fina’s snack of choice.
Thoft (Loyalty, 2013) doesn’t hold back on her gutsy detective’s flaws or on irrelevant side trips. But Fina’s second outing is a mostly enjoyable roller-coaster tour of the rapidly changing world of assisted reproduction.Pub Date: June 26, 2014
ISBN: 978-0-399-16213-8
Page Count: 320
Publisher: Putnam
Review Posted Online: April 16, 2014
Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 1, 2014
A murder is committed in a stalled transcontinental train in the Balkans, and every passenger has a watertight alibi. But Hercule Poirot finds a way.
**Note: This classic Agatha Christie mystery was originally published in England as Murder on the Orient Express, but in the United States as Murder in the Calais Coach. Kirkus reviewed the book in 1934 under the original US title, but we changed the title in our database to the now recognizable title Murder on the Orient Express. This is the only name now known for the book. The reason the US publisher, Dodd Mead, did not use the UK title in 1934 was to avoid confusion with the 1932 Graham Greene novel, Orient Express.
Pub Date: Feb. 28, 1934
ISBN: 978-0062073495
Page Count: -
Publisher: Dodd, Mead
Review Posted Online: Sept. 20, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 1, 1934
Furiously suspenseful, but brain-dead second volume in Child’s gratuitously derivative Jack Reacher action series (Killing Floor, 1997). Reacher, a former Army Military Police Major, has now moved on to Chicago, where he gallantly assists a beautiful mystery woman hobbling on a crutch with her dry cleaning. Seconds later, Reacher and the woman, FBI agent Holly Johnson (also daughter of the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, as well as goddaughter of the President), are kidnaped by armed gunmen. Handcuffed together and tossed in the back of a van, the two are taken to the Montana mountain stronghold of Beau Borken, a fat, ugly, psychopathically vicious neo-Nazi militia leader given to sawing the arms off day laborers and making windy speeches about how he brilliant he is. Of course, the kidnappers don’t know that they have a former military police major in their clutches who, in addition to having a Silver Star for heroism, is one of the best snipers the Army has ever produced, can pull iron rings out of barn doors, and kill bad guys with lit cigarettes. Meanwhile, a team of FBI agents, at least one of whom is a mole leaking information to Borken, identify Reacher from a reconstructed photo taken from the dry cleaner’s surveillance camera. Borken, impressed with Reacher’s military record, lectures him about his brilliant plan to overthrow the US using a hijacked Army missile unit, with Holly held as a hostage in a specially constructed, dynamite-lined prison cell. Borken stupidly lets Reacher best him in a shooting match, then grandiosely turns his back on his captives enough times for Reacher and Holly to escape, cause havoc, get captured, escape, make love in the woods, cause more havoc, and get captured again, as General Johnson, FBI Director Harlan Webster, and General Garber, Reacher’s former commander, plan a covert strike on Borken’s fortress that’s certain to fail. Another Rogue Warrior meets Die Hard with all the typical over-the-top plotting, blood-splattering ultraviolence, lock-jawed heroics and the dumbest villains this side of Ruby Ridge.
Pub Date: July 20, 1998
ISBN: 0-399-14379-3
Page Count: 384
Publisher: Putnam
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 15, 1998
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