An engaging mystery in a vivid setting with offbeat characters and a sense of fun.
Movie actors, mobsters, a suspicious death, and an unexpected romance enliven a Texas town.
In his uneven but enjoyable fourth installment of a mystery series, Rusz returns readers to Brewster County, Texas, and its growing cast of colorful characters headed by handsome Sheriff Clayton Shoot. Written in a lighter vein than previous volumes of the series, the book blends family secrets and a down-home version of Shakespearean romantic intrigue with a film crew and a questionable crime. Did wealthy ranch owner Tilda Quigg die from a fall down the stairs, or did her local political nemesis, the sheriff’s prickly, outspoken older sister, Beatrice, push her? Townsfolk are whispering. And why is Tilda’s live-in ranch manager, Buck Anderson, talking to seedy mobsters about plans to turn her huge spread into an adult entertainment destination? But the mystery (and its underwhelming midnovel surprise) takes a back seat to dueling matchmakers’ efforts to get Clayton and one-time girlfriend Claire Harp back together and to convince sharp-tongued Beatrice and equally brusque, retired Master Sgt. Benny Peyton that they belong together, à la Shakespeare’s Much Ado About Nothing.As in previous installments, apart from the series opener, The Window Trail (2018), perpetually blushing Clayton and indecisive English professor Claire’s cooling-to-moribund relationship is the least intriguing element. Readers will be much more excited about the hapless gangsters, bumptious Beatrice, and the attraction between the story’s most appealing characters: loner cowboy Loris Garrett and Belinda Briggs, a smitten young Hollywood actor. She and movie star Marlo Hansbury,who has Clayton in her sights, are among a trio of actors on hand for romance and hookups while in town shooting a film based on the recent homicide that occurred in the county (chronicled in The Lost Mine Trail, 2020). Throughout, the author once again demonstrates his series’ greatest strength: a deeply informed depiction of the sprawling Texas setting, from town and ranch life to rugged, two-rut roads and “gorges and canyons, plains and moonscapes, mountains pressing upon mountains, like they were sliding out of sight.”
An engaging mystery in a vivid setting with offbeat characters and a sense of fun.Pub Date: N/A
ISBN: N/A
Page Count: 380
Publisher: manuscript
Review Posted Online: April 3, 2023
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
A dramatic, vividly detailed reconstruction of a little-known aspect of the Vietnam War.
A young woman’s experience as a nurse in Vietnam casts a deep shadow over her life.
When we learn that the farewell party in the opening scene is for Frances “Frankie” McGrath’s older brother—“a golden boy, a wild child who could make the hardest heart soften”—who is leaving to serve in Vietnam in 1966, we feel pretty certain that poor Finley McGrath is marked for death. Still, it’s a surprise when the fateful doorbell rings less than 20 pages later. His death inspires his sister to enlist as an Army nurse, and this turn of events is just the beginning of a roller coaster of a plot that’s impressive and engrossing if at times a bit formulaic. Hannah renders the experiences of the young women who served in Vietnam in all-encompassing detail. The first half of the book, set in gore-drenched hospital wards, mildewed dorm rooms, and boozy officers’ clubs, is an exciting read, tracking the transformation of virginal, uptight Frankie into a crack surgical nurse and woman of the world. Her tensely platonic romance with a married surgeon ends when his broken, unbreathing body is airlifted out by helicopter; she throws her pent-up passion into a wild affair with a soldier who happens to be her dead brother’s best friend. In the second part of the book, after the war, Frankie seems to experience every possible bad break. A drawback of the story is that none of the secondary characters in her life are fully three-dimensional: Her dismissive, chauvinistic father and tight-lipped, pill-popping mother, her fellow nurses, and her various love interests are more plot devices than people. You’ll wish you could have gone to Vegas and placed a bet on the ending—while it’s against all the odds, you’ll see it coming from a mile away.
A dramatic, vividly detailed reconstruction of a little-known aspect of the Vietnam War.Pub Date: Feb. 6, 2024
ISBN: 9781250178633
Page Count: 480
Publisher: St. Martin's
Review Posted Online: Nov. 4, 2023
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Dec. 1, 2023
PERSPECTIVES
BOOK TO SCREEN
SEEN & HEARD
As usual, Evanovich handles the funny stuff better (much better) than the mystery stuff.
Stephanie Plum’s 31st adventure shows that Trenton’s preeminent fugitive-apprehension agent still has plenty of tricks up her sleeve, and needs every one of them.
The current caseload for Stephanie and Lula—the ex-prostitute file clerk at her cousin Vincent Plum’s bail bonds company, who serves as her unflappable sidekick—begins with two “failures to appear.” Eugene Fleck is suspected of being Robin Hoodie, who robs from the rich and, yes, distributes the proceeds to the poor. Racketeer Bruno Jug, who’s missed his court date on charges of tax evasion, is also suspected of drugging and raping a 14-year-old. But neither of these fugitives can hold a candle to Zoran Djordjevic, aka Fang, a self-proclaimed vampire wanted in connection with the gruesome fate of his late wife and three other missing women. As usual, Stephanie’s personal life is just as helter-skelter as her professional life as a bounty hunter. She’s managed to get herself engaged both to Det. Joe Morelli, of the Trenton PD, and Ranger, a former Special Forces agent who runs a private security firm; she thinks she may be pregnant; and she’s willing to marry the father, whichever of her fiances that turns out to be. On top of it all, her nothingburger schoolmate Herbert Slovinski suddenly pops up at one of the funerals she ferries her Grandma Mazur to, hitting on her relentlessly and gilding his importunities by cleaning and painting her shabby apartment and laying new carpet. Luckily, Lula’s on hand to offer cupcakes that stave off the worst disasters, and whenever this hodgepodge threatens to slow down, another FTA appears, or fails to appear.
As usual, Evanovich handles the funny stuff better (much better) than the mystery stuff.Pub Date: Nov. 5, 2024
ISBN: 9781668003138
Page Count: 320
Publisher: Atria
Review Posted Online: Oct. 26, 2024
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Dec. 1, 2024
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