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MIMI LEE CRACKS THE CODE

Still good, but the cat, who gets all the punchlines, is a lot funnier than the people.

An animal groomer and her telepathically connected cat must clear the name of a friend and investor.

In addition to her work as the CEO of her own tech company and the main investor in Hollywoof, Mimi Lee’s pet grooming business, Pixie St. James is joining the short-term rental market with a property she’s just bought in Catalina. And because the house is unbooked for an upcoming weekend, she offers it gratis to Mimi; Mimi’s boyfriend, Josh, a lawyer; and even Mimi’s cat, Marshmallow. It’s a great chance for Mimi and Josh to get away from it all. Catalina’s only an hour from LA by ferry but a world away in terms of lifestyle, and Mimi and Josh need a break from work, which keeps them from spending much time together. But after Mimi and Josh arrive with Marshmallow in tow, their vacation is essentially cancelled because Gertrude, Josh’s new paralegal, all but ensures that Josh has to burn the midnight oil on work responsibilities. If that weren’t enough to put a damper on their good times, an issue with Pixie’s latest renter, Davis D. Argo, shifts Mimi from couple time to investigative mode. Bad news about Davis’ fate connects Mimi with her old antagonist Detective Brown, though he may have become a bit gentler now that Mimi’s given him Nimbus the kitty to adopt. If nothing else, Mimi’s confident that her ability to telepathically connect to Marshmallow will help clear Pixie as she and Marshmallow dig into the case.

Still good, but the cat, who gets all the punchlines, is a lot funnier than the people.

Pub Date: Nov. 30, 2021

ISBN: 978-1-984-80503-4

Page Count: 288

Publisher: Berkley

Review Posted Online: Sept. 14, 2021

Kirkus Reviews Issue: Oct. 1, 2021

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NIGHTSHADE

As the prosecutor sadly observes: “All this because of a dead buffalo.”

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  • New York Times Bestseller

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

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A CONSPIRACY OF BONES

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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