An enthralling military mystery with vibrant characters.
In this debut thriller, a Marine officer investigates a string of murders in Quantico, Virginia.
Gunnery Sgt. Roscoe Vance accepts an invitation to a Christmas party with a variety of guests. Officers don’t normally socialize with enlisted personnel, but the party is an opportunity for Vance to reunite with old friend Maj. Aksel Dahl. It’s a fairly ordinary get-together until someone suddenly guns down the Norwegian attaché. Before the night is over, Vance discovers both the shooter and a fellow Marine officer with their throats slashed. As the officer was a close friend, Vance wants answers, starting with who hired the assassin to kill the attaché and why. But though he’d spoken with Dahl at the party, the major is now strangely hard to find. Vance scours Quantico for clues, with help from Dr. Avery Quinn of the National University of the Marine Corps and a few fellow officers. Just when it seems as if they’ve got a lead, the murders continue. Evidence moreover suggests someone has targeted Vance, so he may be getting close to the culprits. Even if he’s in danger, Vance remains dead set on tracking down whomever killed his friend. Dayton skillfully establishes characters and relationships. For example, an Afghanistan flashback spotlights Vance’s history with Dahl. In addition, Vance is separated from his wife, who believes his Marine life overshadows his family. But Quinn is the story’s best character; she validates her boast of a “big Ph.D. brain” by unearthing perhaps the most essential clue. The engaging tale favors the murder mystery over action, although readers eventually get to see Vance hold his own in a fight. While identifying the villains isn’t difficult, the killings (after the party) are genuinely shocking, as they happen unexpectedly. The author sets a fast pace but knows when to slow down the narrative for maximum effect, as when Vance and Quinn methodically stake out a restaurant for suspects.
An enthralling military mystery with vibrant characters.Pub Date: April 21, 2020
ISBN: N/A
Page Count: 222
Publisher: Self
Review Posted Online: April 16, 2021
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
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
© Copyright 2025 Kirkus Media LLC. All Rights Reserved.
Follow
Popular in this Genre
We can’t wait for you to join Kirkus!
It’s free and takes less than 10 seconds!
Already have an account? Log in.
OR
Sign in with GoogleTrouble signing in? Retrieve credentials.
Welcome Back!
OR
Sign in with GoogleTrouble signing in? Retrieve credentials.
