A complex, riveting thriller about shocking family secrets.
In this mystery, a woman learns startling truths about her family.
Lucy Gillespie’s wonderful life in Canada as a thriving artist with a devoted husband is forever changed when she learns she has inherited a substantial trust and a twisted family history. She meets her grandaunt Gracie Hogan, who, at the age of 96, is able to recall key stories about Lucy’s parents, grandparents, and more. Her recordings and Lucy’s own investigation lead to several striking revelations. But Lucy’s pursuit of the truth is challenged by figures who don’t want it disclosed. Juliette Garner is the lawyer who is responsible for the trust Lucy stands to inherit. Juliette’s great-uncles worked with Lucy's grandfather, but the women’s ancestors weren’t perfect, and Juliette is desperate to keep certain secrets from being unearthed. In addition, there is a strange man visiting Gracie who has his own warped connection to Lucy and her family. He wants the land and the money Gracie has now given Lucy, and he’ll do anything to get them. As Lucy continues to delve into her family’s past, she also uncovers her own unsettling memories. The stress of the sudden inheritance and the disturbing secrets begins to have an effect on her. She finds herself waking up in her studio (“her special place”) with finished paintings in front of her of a mysterious figure. Lucy soon discovers that following the clues to family mysteries may reveal more than she ever dreamed of or wanted. Gibbens has crafted a gripping series opener with unpredictable yet believable twists and turns. Lucy’s family’s history is reminiscent of a gothic horror story while her own drama resembles a modern thriller. The author skillfully mixes the dark doings of her unsavory characters with more lighthearted scenes between Lucy and her loved ones. Almost all of the players feel realistic, with intricate and credible character arcs. The tale’s villain is somewhat one-dimensional, but when the antagonist plays off such engaging heroes as Lucy and Gracie, the dialogue and the characters’ reactions make up for it.
A complex, riveting thriller about shocking family secrets.Pub Date: Jan. 24, 2022
ISBN: 978-1-03-911291-9
Page Count: 306
Publisher: FriesenPress
Review Posted Online: Sept. 8, 2022
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Nov. 1, 2022
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
A top-class cozy infused with dry wit and charming characters who draw you in and leave you wanting more, please.
Four residents of Coopers Chase, a British retirement village, compete with the police to solve a murder in this debut novel.
The Thursday Murder Club started out with a group of septuagenarians working on old murder cases culled from the files of club founder Elizabeth Best’s friend Penny Gray, a former police officer who's now comatose in the village's nursing home. Elizabeth used to have an unspecified job, possibly as a spy, that has left her with a large network of helpful sources. Joyce Meadowcroft is a former nurse who chronicles their deeds. Psychiatrist Ibrahim Arif and well-known political firebrand Ron Ritchie complete the group. They charm Police Constable Donna De Freitas, who, visiting to give a talk on safety at Coopers Chase, finds the residents sharp as tacks. Built with drug money on the grounds of a convent, Coopers Chase is a high-end development conceived by loathsome Ian Ventham and maintained by dangerous crook Tony Curran, who’s about to be fired and replaced with wary but willing Bogdan Jankowski. Ventham has big plans for the future—as soon as he’s removed the nuns' bodies from the cemetery. When Curran is murdered, DCI Chris Hudson gets the case, but Elizabeth uses her influence to get the ambitious De Freitas included, giving the Thursday Club a police source. What follows is a fascinating primer in detection as British TV personality Osman allows the members to use their diverse skills to solve a series of interconnected crimes.
A top-class cozy infused with dry wit and charming characters who draw you in and leave you wanting more, please.Pub Date: Sept. 22, 2020
ISBN: 978-1-98-488096-3
Page Count: 368
Publisher: Pamela Dorman/Viking
Review Posted Online: June 30, 2020
Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 15, 2020
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
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