Orr fails to capture the magic of earlier series entries (The Bad Break, 2018, etc.), and her humor is less inventive in a...
A relentless obituary writer gets a little too involved in her work while investigating murders in a small Virginia town filled with big personalities.
Tuttle Corner is rocked when not one, but two people are murdered within a single week. Not that folks were too surprised when town miscreant Justin Balzichek met an unsavory end—for him, the question had always been not whether but when—but it’s quite a surprise that noted lobbyist Dale Mountbatten’s wife, Greer, is dispatched so shortly afterward. When obituarist and generally curious person Riley Ellison goes to the local funeral home to get the facts of the unsolved cases, her efforts are hampered because her friendly funeral director has been replaced by one Ashley Campbell, a mischievous grouch who seems determined to use Riley to express his own problems. Yet Riley persists in investigating, if only because the murders appear to have chased restaurateur Rosalee Belanger out of town, and she can’t live another day without Rosalee’s croissants. Though Riley’s colleague Holman is typically a human computer, more focused on the practical than the potential, Riley notices that he’s fixated on the murders as well, and she realizes that Rosalee has the same place in Holman’s heart that croissants have in hers. It’s just as well that the current cases are occupying Riley. Her colleague and friend Flick has shown new interest in the sudden death of Riley’s grandfather several years before, and the more recent murders take Riley’s mind at least briefly off fears of what Flick may discover. Another distraction, though perhaps less welcome, is the reinvention of Regina H., who previously self-identified as Riley’s Personal Romance ConciergeTM and is actively rebranding herself as a life coach with #allthehashtags (but #noneoftheanswers, according to Riley).
Orr fails to capture the magic of earlier series entries (The Bad Break, 2018, etc.), and her humor is less inventive in a franchise that remains good but not great.Pub Date: June 18, 2019
ISBN: 978-1-945551-46-8
Page Count: 280
Publisher: Prospect Park Books
Review Posted Online: March 30, 2019
Kirkus Reviews Issue: April 15, 2019
A stylish post–World War I mystery with plenty of twists and strong female characters fully capable of negotiating them.
A titled lady and her clever maid solve yet another difficult case of murder.
It's 1920. Lady Phoebe Renshaw and her maid, Eva Huntford, have been instrumental in solving many a murder, including, most recently, that of Phoebe’s sister Julia’s husband (A Murderous Marriage, 2018). Lady Julia, pregnant and moping around her grandparents’ home, still blames herself for her husband’s death. Phoebe is surprised to learn that the family’s longtime head gardener has retired, leaving the job to Stephen Ripley, brother to Keenan, whose orchard produces pears for the cider known as perry. Stephen’s debut is marred when he’s seen bullying the garden boy, William. So when he’s found dead in the garden, not even his brother seems all that sad—especially since Stephen was evidently conspiring with a brash American who wanted to buy the orchard and build a hotel on the heavily mortgaged property. In the absence of William, who’s vanished, Keenan is arrested by the local chief inspector, who sees no need to look further. Luckily, Eva’s boyfriend, Constable Miles Brannock, is keeping an open mind. Eva worries about her sister Alice, who comes to visit without her children and seems out of sorts and perhaps a bit too interested in Keenan, her old boyfriend. Phoebe fears that William’s seen the killer and gone into hiding and ponders who’d want Stephen dead. Local pub owner Joe Murdock, whose business depends on perry, almost came to blows with the American, and sheep farmer Fred Corbyn stands to lose pasture and watering rights if the property is sold. The villagers, who loyally try to give Keenan an alibi, pitch in to harvest the pears and make the perry while he languishes in jail and Phoebe and Eva seek to unearth a killer.
A stylish post–World War I mystery with plenty of twists and strong female characters fully capable of negotiating them.Pub Date: Feb. 25, 2020
ISBN: 978-1-4967-1742-9
Page Count: 304
Publisher: Kensington
Review Posted Online: Nov. 24, 2019
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Dec. 15, 2019
Dozens of twists and a couple of first-class shocks, but it all trails off like an endless fireworks display that keeps...
Lincoln Rhyme, the quadriplegic criminalist who recently knocked 'em dead at the bijou (The Bone Collector, 1997), is back, sweating to rescue a pair of kidnapped Tarheelers from the insect-loving kid who's snatched them.
Lured to North Carolina by the promise of some experimental surgery that might allow him to move more than his head and a single finger, Rhyme is on hand, along with his protégé Amelia Sachs, when Sheriff Jim Bell gets the news that Garrett Hanlon, the troubled teenager who already killed fellow-student Billy Stail and dragged Mary Beth McConnell off to the back of beyond, has returned to abduct nurse Lydia Johansson as well. Analyzing the scanty trace evidence with all his usual rigor, Rhyme, using Sachs as his eyes and nose at the crime scene, dopes out where the Insect Boy must be taking his victims, and Sachs, joined by Bell's deputies, races a trio of moronic moonshiners bent on a reward Mary Beth's mother has offered to catch up with Hanlon first. The case would be closed if this were anybody but devious Deaver. But the arrest is only his cue to turn up the heat, as Rhyme and Sachs duke it out over Hanlon's guilt, and their conflict leaves Sachs on the run with Hanlon in custody, or vice versa. As former allies turn against each other, Deaver shows loyalties dissolving and reforming in record time. But the effect of this double-time quadrille is more ingenious than illuminating; Rhyme's forensic work is more dogged than gripping; and the galaxy of junior-league threats who take the place of Deaver's usual sociopathic monsters (The Devil's Teardrop, 1999, etc.) are no more threatening than a cloud of pesky mosquitoes.
Dozens of twists and a couple of first-class shocks, but it all trails off like an endless fireworks display that keeps exploding into bangs and blossoms even after you've started to look for your car. (Literary Guild/Mystery Guild Main Selection.)Pub Date: May 9, 2000
ISBN: 0-684-85563-1
Page Count: 432
Publisher: Simon & Schuster
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 1, 2000
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