Fueled more by sadness and moral outrage than mystery—but fans won’t mind that a bit.
The latest round of unrest in the English Midlands town of Norbold revolves around two women. One of them is dead, and the other just won’t go away.
DC Hazel Best, a friend of Peregrine, the 28th Earl of Byrfield, recognizes the man PC Wayne Budgen has found beaten unconscious as archaeologist David Sperrin, the illegitimate son of the 27th Earl. Sperrin’s injuries have inconveniently shut down his memory, but unbidden and unnerving snapshots return to him as he lies in the hospital. A woman had been running toward him. She was crying that she wouldn’t become a China Rose because she was a Vietnamese citizen. She was shot in the back and died in his arms. But he can’t remember her name or explain what brought them together in the first place or why no one can find her body. As Hazel and her mates at the Meadowvale Police Station labor to fill in the blanks in Sperrin’s story, her quirky bookseller friend, Gabriel Ash, must deal with an equally troublesome woman: his estranged wife, Cathy, who’s popped up out of nowhere in defiance of a warrant for her arrest for murder, ostensibly to spend some time with the children Ash wants sole custody of, but almost certainly bent on some more sinister errand. Emerging hints that Rose Doe, as the police dub the victim pulled from the Clover Hill Dam—the woman David remembered—had been smuggled into the country by human traffickers deepens both the mystery and the menace for Hazel and makes it even more imperative that Ash send Cathy on her way regardless of every threat she makes to his family’s quiet life.
Fueled more by sadness and moral outrage than mystery—but fans won’t mind that a bit.Pub Date: Sept. 7, 2021
ISBN: 978-0-7278-5065-2
Page Count: 240
Publisher: Severn House
Review Posted Online: June 15, 2021
Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 1, 2021
Agreeably credible lovers and a neat piece of home-restoration compensate some for the hokey hauntings on the bayou. Loyal...
A gumbo seasoned with ghosts, love, and murder on the bayou.
When 30-something Declan Fitzgerald of Boston, a successful lawyer and a member of a large and loving family, breaks off his engagement to very suitable Jessica, he knows he needs to change his life. Lawyering is not fun anymore, so, recalling Manet Hall, an old deserted plantation house he once visited with law school classmate and New Orleans native Remy, he buys the property and moves down south. Declan is also a gifted craftsman, a born decorator, and very, very rich. Soon, he meets beautiful Lena, who’s visiting her grandmother Odette, Declan’s friendly Cajun neighbor. Declan is as certain that Lena is destined to be his wife as he was that Manet Hall would become his home. But, surprise, Lena has a troubled past (like the house) and is determined to resist Declan’s courtship. While he suits Lena and works on the place, Declan experiences troubling dreams. It seems he’s actually reliving the novel’s parallel story, which took place in 1899. In that year, the maid, Abbey Manet (from whom Lena, coincidentally, is descended, and who married wealthy Lucian Manet), was raped and murdered by her brother-in-law Julian as she nursed her baby daughter. Her body was dumped into the bayou by her mother-in-law, who despised her. And grief-stricken husband Lucian, away at the time, being told that Abbey had run off, committed suicide. Now, in an unconvincing twist of gender and reincarnation, it’s Declan who hears a baby crying , experiences childbirth and rape as the reincarnation of Abbey, while Lena is Lucian. The two accept all this with equanimity, and, Manet Hall’s secrets revealed, it becomes the setting for predictable and much foreshadowed resolutions.
Agreeably credible lovers and a neat piece of home-restoration compensate some for the hokey hauntings on the bayou. Loyal fans will enjoy.Pub Date: Oct. 1, 2001
ISBN: 0-399-14824-8
Page Count: 368
Publisher: Putnam
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 1, 2001
A complex mystery and yummy grilled cheese recipes. What’s not to like?
The queen of grilled cheese proves for a third time that she’s also a pretty good detective.
Carly’s Grilled Cheese Eatery is the place where Carly Hale serves up delicious and exotic sandwiches. Her latest customers are Dawn Chapin and Klarissa Taddeo, whom she remembers from high school. Klarissa is about to marry Tony Manous, but not all is moonlight and roses. She blames Dawn, her wedding planner, for not reserving a venue for her bridal shower on time. The pair talk Carly into making grilled cheese doughnuts for the party, which Dawn’s mother will host at her mansion. Dawn and Klarissa have been best buds forever, but Dawn, who’s not fond of Tony, feels underappreciated. The shower unfolds without incident until Tony shows up, has a fight with the videographer, and turns up dead at the bottom of a staircase. Neither Carly’s boyfriend, Ari Mitchell, nor Police Chief Fred Holloway, a family friend, is happy to see Carly, who’s been entangled in murder cases before, get involved in this one. But she can’t resist a little sleuthing, and she agrees to help Dawn, who’s naturally come under suspicion. For better or worse, there’s a lot of tension between the Manous and Taddeo families, so Dawn’s not the only suspect. When town manager Gretel Engstrom, who had problems with Tony, goes missing, the case becomes even more unnerving.
A complex mystery and yummy grilled cheese recipes. What’s not to like?Pub Date: Jan. 31, 2023
ISBN: 978-1-72823-838-8
Page Count: 280
Publisher: Poisoned Pen
Review Posted Online: Nov. 28, 2022
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Dec. 15, 2022
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