A suspenseful literary whodunit with appealing depth.
Sulzer’s novel follows journalist Peter Christie, the (fictional) great-grandnephew of acclaimed author Agatha, as he investigates a murder on a New England isle.
Peter recounts events following a murder on a small, unnamed Massachusetts island—“a crime that involved massive wealth and the destruction of a family.” On the lawn of wealthy Quentin Douglas’ property, local Betsy Cranmore finds a dead man dressed up in baggy pants and a Red Sox cap, like Douglas often wears; it turns out to be Chester Danville, a lawyer and deacon at a local church. Peter, a local journalist for the Island Forum weekly newspaper, heads to the scene, determined to figure out what happened. Throughout the novel, Peter interacts with various locals, including the large Douglas family, law enforcement officials, newspaper staff, and players from local baseball teams. As he tries to suss out suspects and motives for the killing, he dodges bullets, nearly drowns, and narrowly avoids what appears to be arson. Along the way, he makes time for lifelong hobbies and new island activities. Overall, this is a story of deception and illusion that takes a literary turn early on when the protagonist tries to find the source of a quote found on a piece of paper in the victim’s pocket, which begins: “All that smolders isn’t seen / It often lurks betwixt, between.” Along the way, Peter struggles greatly with memories of past experiences, which he compares to those of his illustrious relative. The narrative effectively sets up a struggle between the concepts of legal and personal justice, culminating in a satisfying ending. As in most mysteries, there’s a wide variety of suspects; many characters are deeply flawed—often classist, suspicious, and egotistical. Although the novel is not a police procedural, it shares many characteristics of the subgenre, thanks to newspaperman Peters’ investigative instincts, but its violence isn’t especially graphic. It’s a highly recommended addition to public libraries, whose patrons will particularly enjoy the tale’s nods to Dame Agatha.
A suspenseful literary whodunit with appealing depth.Pub Date: Dec. 2, 2025
ISBN: 9781636987576
Page Count: 250
Publisher: Morgan James Fiction
Review Posted Online: Oct. 2, 2025
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
BOOK REVIEW
Don’t feel that your current news feed is disturbing enough? Penny has just what you need.
A sequel to The Grey Wolf (2024) that begins with the earlier novel’s last line: “We have a problem.” And what a problem it is.
Now that Chief Inspector Armand Gamache and his allies in and out of the Sûreté du Québec have saved Canada’s water supply from poisoning on a grand scale, you might think they were entitled to some rest and relaxation in Three Pines. No such luck. Don Joseph Moretti, the Sixth Family head who ordered the hit-and-run on biologist Charles Langlois that nearly killed Gamache as well, is plotting still more criminal enterprises, and Gamache can’t be sure that Chief Inspector Evelyn Tardiff, who’s been cozying up to Moretti in order to get the goods on him, hasn’t gone over to the dark side herself. In fact, Gamache’s uncertainty about Evelyn sets the pattern for much of what follows, for another review of one of Langlois’ notebooks reveals a plot so monstrous that it’s impossible to be sure who’s not in on it. Is it really true, as paranoid online rumors have it, that “Canada is about to attack the U.S.”? Or is it really the other way around, as the discovery of War Plan Red would have it? As the threats loom larger and larger, they raise questions as to whether the Black Wolf, the evil power behind them, is Moretti, disgraced former Deputy Prime Minister Marcus Lauzon, whom Gamache has arranged to have released from prison, or someone even more highly placed. A brief introductory note dating Penny’s delivery of the uncannily prophetic manuscript to September 2024 will do little to assuage the anxieties of concerned readers.
Don’t feel that your current news feed is disturbing enough? Penny has just what you need.Pub Date: Oct. 28, 2025
ISBN: 9781250328175
Page Count: 384
Publisher: Minotaur
Review Posted Online: July 17, 2025
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 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
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