Basing her tale in part on the actual Exploring Expeditions’ voyages, Druett (A Watery Grave, 2004) describes with...
The U.S. Exploring Expedition’s Swallow, with sleuthing half-caste Polynesian linguist Wiki Coffin aboard, hits rough seas.
The 1838 voyage has two goals: to explore Antarctica and to determine if privateers have settled on tiny Shark Island, 100 miles off the coast of Brazil, to attack Navy ships. Wiki’s friend George Rochester commands the brig at sea but yields it to the more brutish Lt. Forsythe once land is sighted. Nearing Shark Island, they are hailed by Joel Hammond, first mate of the sealing schooner Annawan, who explains that they are cannibalizing their sister ship, the Hero, which buccaneers left to founder, in order to keep from sinking themselves. Once aboard the Annawan, all hands are dazzled by Captain Ezekiel Reed’s bride, Annabelle. Formerly engaged to Hammond, Annabelle spent the week before her wedding dallying with Wiki. By nightfall, Reed lies dead, skewered by Forsythe’s knife. But Wiki, believing him innocent, interrogates everyone from the boson to the cook, learns the difference between the galley and the pantry, and argues with Rochester over whether there are 16 or 17 hands aboard. Meanwhile, yarns are spun about hidden treasures, racism causes rifts among the crew, and Wiki and Annabelle, to Rochester’s dismay, pick up where they left off.
Basing her tale in part on the actual Exploring Expeditions’ voyages, Druett (A Watery Grave, 2004) describes with contagious conviction floggings, cramped quarters, pettifogging officers and rum rations. Her mystery, however, owes more to Golden Age timetables and to, yes, red herrings.Pub Date: Oct. 11, 2005
ISBN: 0-312-33456-7
Page Count: 288
Publisher: Minotaur
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 15, 2005
Adams (Peach Pies and Alibis, 2013) kicks off a new series featuring strong women, a touch of romance and mysticism, and...
Four women with hidden secrets form a group to combat deceit and solve murders.
The ladies of Miracle Springs work in mysterious ways. Former librarian Nora Pennington, owner of Miracle Books, helps people deal with their troubles by recommending specific reading material. Hester Winthrop, owner and baker at the Gingerbread House, creates scones individually tailored to different people’s needs. Estella Sadler, owner of Magnolia Salon and Spa, is a high-maintenance gal with a bad reputation with men. Quiet June Dixon works at the Miracle Springs thermal pools. All are haunted by terrible events that continue to cast long shadows. The ladies’ passing acquaintance with one another deepens when Neil Parrish, a man who’d chatted with Nora and bought a scone from Hester, falls or is pushed in front of a train. After Sheriff Todd calls them in for interviews because they’d all spoken with the dead man, they confide in each other their suspicions that Parrish was murdered despite the sheriff’s ready assumption that his death was suicide. Parrish was one of the partners in Pine Ridge Properties, a new housing development going up near Mineral Springs, and June, who talked to him at the pools, said he seemed to have regrets about the project. Incensed by the way the misogynist sheriff treats them, the ladies form a secret society to investigate. When Nora expresses interest in buying a house in Pine Ridge, she’s surprised to learn that she qualifies for a loan from the local bank run by the sheriff’s brother. As the ladies investigate, another partner in the suspicious building project is killed, and Estella is arrested for his murder. Now the friends are even more determined to discover the truth.
Adams (Peach Pies and Alibis, 2013) kicks off a new series featuring strong women, a touch of romance and mysticism, and both the cunning present-day mystery and the slowly revealed secrets of the intriguing heroines’ pasts.Pub Date: Oct. 31, 2017
ISBN: 978-1-4967-1237-0
Page Count: 304
Publisher: Kensington
Review Posted Online: Aug. 6, 2017
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 15, 2017
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
All three tales offer a dash of detection, but their strong suit is hometown charm.
Veteran Maine crime writers Meier, Hollis, and Ross (Yule Log Murder, 2018, etc.) team up once more for a trio of holiday-themed treats.
Haunted houses, a holiday staple, are an especially good fit for the authors’ folksy Down East setting. When the decrepit house at 66 School St. in Meier’s “Haunted House Murder” is purchased by a young couple, the good citizens of Tinker’s Cove have high hopes for its renovation—at least until the spooky lights and eerie noises emanating from the tower of the home make the local residents fear for the safety of their new neighbors. In “Death by Haunted House,” Hollis ups the ante. Not only does the couple that buys the creaky old place next door to Hayley and Danny Powell look and act peculiar, but Wendi Jo Willis, the real estate agent who sold them the house, disappears shortly after closing the sale. And in "Hallowed Out," Ross casts her net wide, offering a whole bundle of haunted houses for the price of one. To draw off-season tourists to Busman’s Harbor, Harley Prendergast, owner of the Lobsterman’s Wharf Motel, starts up a haunted house trolley tour. Some of his ghosts are questionable at best. But in the venue offering the best-documented of the local legends—the shooting of bootlegger Ned Calhoun—Prendergast’s guests get to witness a real-life shooting that leaves Spencer Jones, the actor who portrays Calhoun, undeniably dead.
All three tales offer a dash of detection, but their strong suit is hometown charm.Pub Date: Aug. 27, 2019
ISBN: 978-1-4967-1996-6
Page Count: 320
Publisher: Kensington
Review Posted Online: May 26, 2019
Kirkus Reviews Issue: June 15, 2019
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
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