The wide-ranging intelligence and exhaustive detail are stellar examples of what other police procedurals want to be when...
A bingo winner’s fatal mugging is only the first act in a splendidly overstuffed tale of serial killing.
Michael Waterman bestrides Bartonshire like a colossus. His gambling clubs dot the landscape, and his friendship with Chief Supt. Raymond Yardley, his brother-in-law, keeps him abreast of any development that might threaten his empire. But not all of Waterman’s power can keep his son Ben from falling for Stephen Halliday, a steward at the Bull’s Eye bingo club, or keep Waterman’s own name out of the newspapers when Tony Baker finds the body of old Wilma Fenton, whose killer took off before pocketing her winnings. Baker, a true-crime writer who’s already run circles around the coppers trying to catch an earlier serial killer, wastes no time in putting his name in the headlines again. Soon he’s getting anonymous letters from somebody who cackles about murders yet to come—murders alarmingly close to Waterman Entertainment’s outposts in Stansfield and Barton—that DCI Judy Hill, her husband DCI Lloyd, and their serious crime squad are helpless to prevent. Veterans Hill and Lloyd (Death in the Family, 2003, etc.) consider the case from every possible angle, analyzing forensics and alibis, sifting motives and criminal histories, and consulting a psychological profiler. Yet it’s not till the last act that the outlines of McGown’s architecture finally become clear.
The wide-ranging intelligence and exhaustive detail are stellar examples of what other police procedurals want to be when they grow up.Pub Date: Jan. 25, 2005
ISBN: 0-345-47655-7
Page Count: 320
Publisher: Ballantine
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Dec. 1, 2004
Despite its caloric restrictions, Fluke’s 11th cozy is a tasty treat.
A new fitness regimen allows Hannah Swensen (Carrot Cake Murder, 2008, etc.) to exercise her ingenuity along with her abs when she finds a dead body in the local health club’s Jacuzzi.
Hannah isn’t used to having her suitor, Detective Mike Kingston, give her amateur investigations his blessings. But then, she’s not used to having to eat skinless chicken breasts night after night instead of feasting on the treats she and Lisa Beeseman serve up daily at The Cookie Jar. So even though her diet and exercise plan—undertaken in a last-ditch attempt to fit into the Regency dress she ordered for her mother’s book launch—is a drag, her newfound freedom to probe the death of fitness instructor Ronni Ward is a treat, not in the least because Ronni’s demise puts paid to her shameless flirting with every man in sight. Not only Mike, but Hannah’s sister Andrea’s county-cop husband Bill and Lisa’s local-cop husband Herb are barred from the official investigation because they were just too close to the victim. In fact, Norman Rhodes, Hannah’s second-string beau, may be the only man in Lake Eden Ronni hadn’t tried to bed. His immunity to Ronni’s charms, along with his own charming modesty, raises his stock in Hannah’s eyes, and before long the two of them are whipping up Bonnie Brownie Cookie Bars in his custom-designed kitchen while watching security tapes to see who might have taken Ronni for her final swim.
Despite its caloric restrictions, Fluke’s 11th cozy is a tasty treat.Pub Date: March 1, 2009
ISBN: 978-0-7582-1022-7
Page Count: 320
Publisher: Kensington
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 15, 2009
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
Fans who still mourn the passing of Agatha Christie, the model who’s evoked here in dozens of telltale details, will welcome...
A preternaturally brainy novel within a novel that’s both a pastiche and a deconstruction of golden-age whodunits.
Magpie Murders, bestselling author Alan Conway’s ninth novel about Greek/German detective Atticus Pünd, kicks off with the funeral of Mary Elizabeth Blakiston, devoted housekeeper to Sir Magnus Pye, who’s been found at the bottom of a steep staircase she’d been vacuuming in Pye Hall, whose every external door was locked from the inside. Her demise has all the signs of an accident until Sir Magnus himself follows her in death, beheaded with a sword customarily displayed with a full suit of armor in Pye Hall. Conway's editor, Susan Ryeland, does her methodical best to figure out which of many guilty secrets Conway has provided the suspects in Saxby-on-Avon—Rev. Robin Osborne and his wife, Henrietta; Mary’s son, Robert, and his fiancee, Joy Sanderling; Joy’s boss, surgeon Emilia Redwing, and her elderly father; antiques dealers Johnny and Gemma Whitehead; Magnus’ twin sister, Clarissa; and Lady Frances Pye and her inevitable lover, investor Jack Dartford—is most likely to conceal a killer, but she’s still undecided when she comes to the end of the manuscript and realizes the last chapter is missing. Since Conway in inconveniently unavailable, Susan, in the second half of the book, attempts to solve the case herself, questioning Conway’s own associates—his sister, Claire; his ex-wife, Melissa; his ex-lover, James Taylor; his neighbor, hedge fund manager John White—and slowly comes to the realization that Conway has cast virtually all of them as fictional avatars in Magpie Murders and that the novel, and indeed Conway’s entire fictional oeuvre, is filled with a mind-boggling variety of games whose solutions cast new light on murders fictional and nonfictional.
Fans who still mourn the passing of Agatha Christie, the model who’s evoked here in dozens of telltale details, will welcome this wildly inventive homage/update/commentary as the most fiendishly clever puzzle—make that two puzzles—of the year.Pub Date: June 6, 2017
ISBN: 978-0-06-264522-7
Page Count: 464
Publisher: Harper/HarperCollins
Review Posted Online: March 6, 2017
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 15, 2017
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
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