A clever whodunit with a smart, appealing detective.
In this third installment of a mystery series, a sleuth just wants a romantic day trip but instead gets roped into another murder investigation.
Amanda Pennyworth is looking forward to relaxing on Amapas Beach in Puerto Vallarta, Mexico, with her boyfriend, Romero Morelos. But all hopes of fun in the sun are dashed when she finds a woman bludgeoned to death (“Blood from a deep gash in her forehead covered her face like a mask and collected in a viscous dark puddle on the sandy soil next to her head”). The victim’s name is Danielle Maglin, and she, along with some of her friends, was on the same boat that took Amanda and Romero to the isolated beach. The person who committed the crime is most likely someone who was on the boat with Danielle—probably one of her pals. As Amanda helps the local police investigate, she finds out Danielle was both loved and hated by those around her. She was a magnetic woman with a complicated life. Her friends repeatedly describe Danielle as charming, popular, and beautiful but also a troublemaker who knew everyone’s secrets. One of the last people to see Danielle alive was her close friend Terry Blanchard, who is more than willing to point a finger at other guests on the boat trip. Sol and Marcie Spiegel, who desperately wanted the house Danielle bought, are strong suspects. Amanda returns to the United States and is invited by Blanchard to a dinner party with all the guests from the fateful cruise. As the murder suspects are gathered together, Blanchard questions each one and tensions run sky high. Soon, Amanda may have more on her plate than just one murder mystery. Gilbert deftly utilizes his skillful sleuth in this installment. This is a classic locked-room whodunit with a fun cast of characters who keep the plot unpredictable and intriguing. Amanda is an endearing protagonist who uses her keen eye to try to solve this intricate puzzle of greed and jealousy. The story’s two distinctive settings create a captivating contrast and shine a new light on the characters as they return home and grow comfortable—perhaps too comfortable. This volume will thrill fans and entertain newcomers to the series.
A clever whodunit with a smart, appealing detective.Pub Date: Jan. 20, 2023
ISBN: 9781639886494
Page Count: 288
Publisher: Atmosphere Press
Review Posted Online: Feb. 2, 2023
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 15, 2023
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
As the prosecutor sadly observes: “All this because of a dead buffalo.”
Idyllic Catalina Island turns out to be just as crime infested as the rest of Los Angeles County in the latest series launch by the creator of Harry Bosch, Renée Ballard, and the Lincoln Lawyer.
Det. Sgt. Stilwell has been bounced off the county homicide squad and rusticized to Catalina, where the exclusive Black Marlin Club won’t admit even four-term Avalon Mayor Doug Allen to full membership and the most serious infraction seems to be the killing and cutting up of a buffalo, presumably by Henry Gaston, who operates Island Mystery Tours when he’s not threatening endangered species. All that changes with the discovery of a body sunk in the surrounding waters. The corpse, most recognizable by its streak of purple hair, is that of Leigh-Anne Moss, a Black Marlin server recently fired for fraternizing with members and guests she sees as potential sugar daddies. Stilwell is sufficiently invested in her murder to compete vigorously over jurisdiction with Rex Ahearn, the LA County homicide detective who kept his job when Stilwell lost his. Their rivalry, fueled by mutual contempt, is only the first hint that Stilwell will end up fighting his counterparts in law enforcement and local government at least as hard as he fights crooks like hit man Merris Spivak and Oscar “Baby Head” Terranova, Henry’s boss, who comes under sharper scrutiny when Henry disappears and ends up dead himself. Connelly handles his hero’s obligatory romance with assistant harbormaster Tash Dano and his increasingly wary alliance with assistant D.A. Monika Juarez with equal professionalism, and if the wrap-up leaves some loose ends dangling, well, that’s what franchises are for.
As the prosecutor sadly observes: “All this because of a dead buffalo.”Pub Date: May 20, 2025
ISBN: 9780316588485
Page Count: 352
Publisher: Little, Brown
Review Posted Online: April 19, 2025
Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 15, 2025
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.
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