Enjoyable as they may be, digressions from the murder plot muddle this engaging mystery.
A Nevada school system hires a seasoned pair of investigators to curb bullying in the district in Armstrong’s novel, the fifth in the Grand Auntie mystery series.
Auntie (aka Dr. Elizabeth “Lisbet” Armory) and her partner in work and in love, Dr. Aladar Gallant, are tasked with quelling the ramped-up bullying at four Las Vegas–area high schools. Dr. Yas Stillwater, the school district’s assistant superintendent, arranges for Armory and Gallant to meet the schools’ principals, each of whom lords “over his or her own fiefdom.” Stillwater also identifies several bullying ringleaders and gives descriptions of their psychological, physical, and online intimidation tactics. At the first school Armory and Gallant visit, their escort is Simp, a gangly, congenial second-semester senior. Not long after, Simp is found dead in Antelope Canyon, about a five-hour drive from the school, and it looks like a murder—he was beaten badly, and has fentanyl and xylazine in his system. All of the principals appear shaken by Simp’s death, and each one seems to have something to hide. About a third of the way through the narrative, Armory’s sister, multibillionaire Countess Gladys Henson, and her new husband arrive from their honeymoon. The newlyweds have plans to build an animal sanctuary in Nevada for the twin elephants they are transporting from India. As charming as this diversion from the main plot is, it feels disconnected and superfluous; readers who are familiar with the first four books in the series will know Gladys’ backstory and eccentricities. In addition to being a mystery, the book is a character study of high school students, administrators, and also Armory and her friends and family. Armstrong excels in descriptions of people—here, she limns Gladys’ architect, flown to Nevada to create the elephants’ habitat: The woman “alighted from the plane in a form fitting zebra bodysuit. She wore a hat the size of Manhattan.” An element of mysticism involving clay story dolls and evocations of the ambiance of Vegas add welcome layers to the story.
Enjoyable as they may be, digressions from the murder plot muddle this engaging mystery.Pub Date: Aug. 19, 2024
ISBN: 9798336371116
Page Count: 230
Publisher: Self
Review Posted Online: Feb. 20, 2025
Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 1, 2025
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
Enough clues, red herrings, and false endings to make readers feel that the Orient Express has put out to sea.
A luxury liner bound for New York in 1924 becomes the scene of a twisty golden age pastiche.
When an unnamed third-class passenger discovers the body of an elderly man at the bottom of an exterior flight of stairs aboard the Endeavour, Capt. McCrory insists it must be an accident. But James Temple, a Scotland Yard detective who just happens to be aboard, says that no one would have ventured to the outdoor steps in the rain without a coat, so the death should be treated as suspicious. Unable to stop Temple from investigating, McCrory assigns ship’s officer Timothy Birch to accompany him, and Birch promptly becomes the world’s most unwilling Dr. Watson, constantly battling Temple over theories and procedures. Anxious that they have only four days to find a potential killer before the ship docks and lets its 2,000 passengers roam free in New York, he’s especially infuriated at the leisurely pace marked by Temple’s bromide, “Facts before witnesses.” There’s reason to sympathize with Temple, because the suspects in first and second class (the only classes that matter in this ultra-class-conscious world) are cardboard cutouts—the successful banker, his trophy wife, the aspiring artists, the gallery owner—who are much less interesting than the secrets they’re hiding. In his most anachronistic development, author Hindle shows Birch, unlike the imperturbable sidekicks he echoes, sunk in grief over his vanished daughter, Amelia, and his estranged wife, Kate, who left him after Amelia disappeared during one of his ocean voyages. He’d do anything to get his daughter back, he tells Temple, and his determination leads to the biggest surprise of all.
Enough clues, red herrings, and false endings to make readers feel that the Orient Express has put out to sea.Pub Date: Sept. 29, 2026
ISBN: 9798217185740
Page Count: 464
Publisher: Dutton
Review Posted Online: July 20, 2026
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 15, 2026
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 2026 Kirkus Media LLC. All Rights Reserved.
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