A spicy and satisfying Cajun stew of twists, violence, and secrets.
A biology student engaging in a field test in poisonous snake- and rat-filled New Orleans swampland literally stumbles on the bloated corpse of a man who recently interviewed her for a job.
In Cagney’s first O’Malley Family Mystery, Tulane graduate student and jazz clarinet player Aislinn “Ash” Jones, wading in a swamp, squishes something under her boot. It’s the nose of the deceased Laughton Cockcroft, director of the nonprofit Swamp Life Society. With the hope of securing an internship with the society, Ash recently interviewed with Cockcroft. Nine days before Ash discovered Cockcroft’s body, two young men were found dead in the swamp. When NOLA Police Det. John O’Malley gets the call about the victims, his partner (and longtime lover), Jay Cordone, remarks that the body count is now eight in five months. Jay and John are both from large families; in fact, John’s sister, Erin, is also a police officer. Another local family is the Thibodeauxs; teenager Robbie Thibodeaux is one of the latest victims in the bayou. His sister, Clarise, tells John her brother was involved with a man conducting some sort of experiments. Shortly afterward, Clarise disappears—because of foul play or is she in hiding? In one of many coincidences, Ash, who grew up on the wrong side of the tracks with an alcoholic, drug-addicted sex worker mother, used to know Robbie when he was a child—even changed his diapers. The gripping novel’s interconnected families smack of a soap opera with crime as a foundation and Ash as the unsuspecting linchpin. Double-crosses, murder, rape, snake venom, and hungry gators will hold the audience’s attention. There’s perhaps too much of everything, or, as Ash would say when talking about New Orleans, things are “always lagniappe—a little extra.” Despite the crimes and wildlife attacks, there is engaging humor in the book. But some bits don’t ring true, as when Cockcroft reveals to Ash details about another candidate for the job he is offering, or when Ash recalls she once needed a public defender because she stole a candy bar. And wouldn’t eight murders in five months be reason to bring in the FBI?
A spicy and satisfying Cajun stew of twists, violence, and secrets.Pub Date: N/A
ISBN: N/A
Page Count: -
Publisher: N/A
Review Posted Online: Sept. 25, 2023
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
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
Don’t feel that your current news feed is disturbing enough? Penny has just what you need.
A sequel to The Grey Wolf (2024) that begins with the earlier novel’s last line: “We have a problem.” And what a problem it is.
Now that Chief Inspector Armand Gamache and his allies in and out of the Sûreté du Québec have saved Canada’s water supply from poisoning on a grand scale, you might think they were entitled to some rest and relaxation in Three Pines. No such luck. Don Joseph Moretti, the Sixth Family head who ordered the hit-and-run on biologist Charles Langlois that nearly killed Gamache as well, is plotting still more criminal enterprises, and Gamache can’t be sure that Chief Inspector Evelyn Tardiff, who’s been cozying up to Moretti in order to get the goods on him, hasn’t gone over to the dark side herself. In fact, Gamache’s uncertainty about Evelyn sets the pattern for much of what follows, for another review of one of Langlois’ notebooks reveals a plot so monstrous that it’s impossible to be sure who’s not in on it. Is it really true, as paranoid online rumors have it, that “Canada is about to attack the U.S.”? Or is it really the other way around, as the discovery of War Plan Red would have it? As the threats loom larger and larger, they raise questions as to whether the Black Wolf, the evil power behind them, is Moretti, disgraced former Deputy Prime Minister Marcus Lauzon, whom Gamache has arranged to have released from prison, or someone even more highly placed. A brief introductory note dating Penny’s delivery of the uncannily prophetic manuscript to September 2024 will do little to assuage the anxieties of concerned readers.
Don’t feel that your current news feed is disturbing enough? Penny has just what you need.Pub Date: Oct. 28, 2025
ISBN: 9781250328175
Page Count: 384
Publisher: Minotaur
Review Posted Online: July 17, 2025
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 15, 2025
© Copyright 2025 Kirkus Media LLC. All Rights Reserved.
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