Dupin’s debut, published first in Germany and then in Britain, holds the promise of more pleasant puzzlers from the scenic...
Commissaire Georges Dupin scratches his head over the death of a 91-year-old Breton hotelier.
It’s been two years and seven months since Dupin was “relocated” to a remote corner of Brittany. Even though locals still consider him a Parisian, he feels at home in Concarneau, where he sits each morning at the bar of the Amiral sipping coffee and gazing at the sea. One morning his peace is shattered by a call from Labat, the more annoying of his two inspectors, who informs him that Pierre-Louis Pennec, owner of the Central Hotel, has been found stabbed to death. Grumbling at the intrusion—he hasn’t even had time to buy his lottery ticket—Dupin hurries to Pont-Aven, an even more idyllic spot than Concarneau because it’s where the wooded river valley joins the rocky Breton coast. There, Dupin becomes more puzzled than put out. Who would kill an elderly man whose chief occupation was sipping the local lambig, an apple brandy even better than calvados, at his own bar at the end of each evening? As he interviews Pennec’s employees—wily Madame Lajoux, steady Madame Mendu, overwhelmed Madame Galez—Dupin’s confusion deepens. Even Pennec’s family, his son, Loic, and his half brother, André, sheds no light on the case. Gradually Dupin becomes convinced that the solution lies in the Central itself, which was home to the impressionist artists who worked at Pont-Aven. Solving this case isn’t paint-by-numbers: it takes ingenuity, determination, and a little help from Marie Morgane Cassel, a comely art historian from Brest.
Dupin’s debut, published first in Germany and then in Britain, holds the promise of more pleasant puzzlers from the scenic north of France.Pub Date: June 30, 2015
ISBN: 978-1-250-06174-4
Page Count: 320
Publisher: Minotaur
Review Posted Online: April 15, 2015
Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 1, 2015
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
More of a western than a mystery, like most of Joe’s adventures, and all the better for the open physical clashes that...
Wyoming Game and Fish Warden Joe Pickett (Free Fire, 2007, etc.), once again at the governor’s behest, stalks the wraithlike figure who’s targeting elk hunters for death.
Frank Urman was taken down by a single rifle shot, field-dressed, beheaded and hung upside-down to bleed out. (You won’t believe where his head eventually turns up.) The poker chip found near his body confirms that he’s the third victim of the Wolverine, a killer whose animus against hunters is evidently being whipped up by anti-hunting activist Klamath Moore. The potential effects on the state’s hunting revenues are so calamitous that Governor Spencer Rulon pulls out all the stops, and Pickett is forced to work directly with Wyoming Game and Fish Director Randy Pope, the boss who fired him from his regular job in Saddlestring District. Three more victims will die in rapid succession before Joe is given a more congenial colleague: Nate Romanowski, the outlaw falconer who pledged to protect Joe’s family before he was taken into federal custody. As usual in this acclaimed series, the mystery is slight and its solution eminently guessable long before it’s confirmed by testimony from an unlikely source. But the people and scenes and enduring conflicts that lead up to that solution will stick with you for a long time.
More of a western than a mystery, like most of Joe’s adventures, and all the better for the open physical clashes that periodically release the tension between the scheming adversaries.Pub Date: May 20, 2008
ISBN: 978-0-399-15488-1
Page Count: 320
Publisher: Putnam
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 15, 2008
It's clearly Cat’s meow, and if you respond positively to her tempestuous carryings-on, then you'll probably forgive Iles...
A serial killer who puts the bite on victims is the villainous center of a long, long psychothriller, as southern Gothic as it gets.
Dr. Catherine (Cat) Ferry is a forensic odontologist, which is to say “an expert on human teeth and the damage they can do.” In four cases enlivening the New Orleans crime scene, however, the damage done is mostly posthumous, the victims having been snuffed first, gnawed on afterward. Cat loves being called in to help NOPD investigations. She also loves a hunky homicide detective named Sean Regan. At some point, Sean says, he will leave his wife and kids for her, but it’s a point of diminishing probability. Hard to really blame Sean, feckless as he is, since Cat’s not only bipolar, alcoholic and promiscuous but also apparently content to remain that way. And then, leaning over the chewed-upon corpse of Arthur LeGendre, she has a panic attack that amounts to an epiphany. Something’s wrong, she intuits, and makes a beeline for home in Natchez, Miss. Somehow, she has sensed a connection between the New Orleans murders and dark doings in her own past. Twenty years ago, when Cat was eight, her daddy was shot to death. A mysterious assailant, grandpapa Kirkland has insisted through the years, but Cat has always found that difficult to accept. Now, in her old bedroom in the family manse, she unexpectedly discovers forensic evidence that supports her skepticism—and discovers as well gleanings of a terrible secret. In the meantime, back in New Orleans, the investigation has heated up, and here too it seems Cat had it right. Murder in New Orleans and murder in Natchez are connected by the same kind of terrible secret.
It's clearly Cat’s meow, and if you respond positively to her tempestuous carryings-on, then you'll probably forgive Iles (The Footprints of God, 2003, etc.) his unabashed quest for bestsellerdom.Pub Date: Feb. 15, 2005
ISBN: 0-7432-3470-7
Page Count: 512
Publisher: Scribner
Review Posted Online: June 24, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 1, 2005
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