Fast-moving follies take the place of character development in Blair’s antic series, which focuses on forward action but not...
Solving a murder while planning a winter festival isn’t half as much fun as solving two murders.
Struggling with the minutely detailed preparations for Metamora, Indiana’s winter festival, organizer Cameron Cripps Hayman labors in vain to make everybody happy. In a place focused on small-town concerns, that means wrestling with problems like coming up with a cat-focused event that will assuage the anger of those who find the proposed dog sled races too canine-centric. Cameron has no idea how Mayor Soapy Savant manages to find solutions that will please people, like getting grouchy Phillis Landow to grant the festival access to her land in exchange for the honor of co-hosting with former Olympian David Dixon. The original plan to hold the downhill skiing event on Clayton Banks’ land is upended by the discovery that Clayton is dead and maybe murdered. It’s definitely an inconvenience for festival planning, but Cameron also knows it might provide a good opportunity to thrust herself and her Action Agency, a crew of citizens who enjoys the odd local mystery (Canal Days Calamity, 2017, etc.), into the investigation, much to the chagrin of Ben, her police officer husband. Cameron’s luck gets simultaneously better and worse when another festival participant is knocked off. Now she must do more planning to make the event not only a success, but a distraction, apart from all the deaths, which don’t seem worth mulling over too much. A slew of quickly introduced townsfolk make up the pool of suspects that conceal the killer, but the only mystery that stands out is the question of where Mike, the town duck, has run off to.
Fast-moving follies take the place of character development in Blair’s antic series, which focuses on forward action but not much else.Pub Date: Nov. 8, 2018
ISBN: 978-0-7387-5121-4
Page Count: 240
Publisher: Midnight Ink/Llewellyn
Review Posted Online: Sept. 17, 2018
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Oct. 1, 2018
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
Fluke’s latest puzzler boasts 25 recipes and even more surprises.
A cruise may be romantic for Lake Eden’s Lutheran minister and his wife, but it’s murder for Hannah Swensen (Gingerbread Cookie Murder, 2010, etc.) and her pals.
Now that his childhood friend Matthew Walters has taken over his pastoral duties for two weeks, Rev. Bob Knudson can finally take his bride Claire on a belated honeymoon. Grandma Knudson’s willing to look after Matthew, just as she did when he and his cousin Paul stayed in Lake Eden as a teenager. And she’s even willing to keep an eye on Pete Nunke’s mynah, who’s staying in the rectory while Pete recovers from back surgery. Of course Hannah keeps Grandma Knudson well stocked with Butterscotch Bonanza Bars and Nutmeg Snaps from The Cookie Jar, her coffee shop. But when one of Hannah’s visits ends with the discovery of Matthew’s body face down in a piece of Red Devil’s Food Cake (recipe included), she leaves Grandma Knudson in the care of Clara and Marguerite Hollenbeck to stalk a killer. Hannah’s partner Lisa Beeseman entertains customers with tales of the grisly find while Hannah enlists sisters Andrea and Michelle to question potential suspects. They even stop at the skuzzy Eagle roadhouse to question Lenny Peske about the dollar coin he gave Lisa as a tip. Hannah’s main partner-in-crime-prevention, Norman Rhodes, on the other hand, has seemed strangely preoccupied ever since his ex-fiancée, Beverly Thorndike, joined his dental practice. Will Claire and Bob’s idyllic adventure spell romantic disaster for Lake Eden’s premier sleuth?
Fluke’s latest puzzler boasts 25 recipes and even more surprises.Pub Date: March 1, 2011
ISBN: 978-0-7582-3491-9
Page Count: 304
Publisher: Kensington
Review Posted Online: April 4, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 15, 2011
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
Don’t be fooled by the brand-new packaging. If you liked Rosenfelt’s rollicking previous series, you’ll like this one too.
The creator of Paterson attorney Andy Carpenter’s dog-friendly mysteries launches a new series starring several of Andy’s friends and enemies, including the canine client he represented in Dachshund Through the Snow (2019), with a supporting role for Andy himself.
Judge Henry “Hatchet” Henderson, whose courtroom has provided the arena for so many of Andy’s shenanigans, is threatened with blackmail, and he wants the newly formed K Team—retired cop Corey Douglas; his canine partner, Simon Garfunkel; Andy’s fearsome investigator, Marcus Clark; and Andy’s wife, Laurie Collins—to identify and neutralize the threat, which he plans to keep confidential by paying Andy a dollar to take the case as his lawyer. At first the team’s inquiries into which of Henderson’s recent cases (the manslaughter conviction of ex-boxer John Lowry? The freeing of self-confessed embezzler Nina Williams on a legal technicality? The acquittal of Ponzi-scheming broker Drew Lockman?) provoked the blackmail lead nowhere. Then they lead to hints of a financial manipulation conspiracy on a grand scale. By the time they lead to Equi-net, an electronic communications network that handles securities trades for people who’d like to keep them private, five people have been murdered, with more slated to follow. The one place they don’t lead is to continued confidentiality, as Henderson learns to his sorrow. The net of deceptions, double-crosses, and professional assassinations gets pretty knotty, but although the conspiracy involves an awful lot of guilty parties, the gimmick behind all their criminal activity is appealingly simple. Through it all, Corey serves as an investigator and narrator every bit as ebullient as Andy and a lot more diligent. In fact, longtime fans may wonder why Rosenfelt saw the need to create a new series that follows the pattern of Andy’s 20 successful cases so closely. If he thought Paterson needed more wiseacre crime fighters, he was undoubtedly right.
Don’t be fooled by the brand-new packaging. If you liked Rosenfelt’s rollicking previous series, you’ll like this one too.Pub Date: March 24, 2020
ISBN: 978-1-250-25719-2
Page Count: 304
Publisher: Minotaur
Review Posted Online: Dec. 22, 2019
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 15, 2020
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
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