Even a dreamboat husband and a dream house don’t seem to satisfy Claire, whose sulky sense of amour-propre makes her teenage...
Bookseller Claire Malloy (Murder as a Second Language, 2013, etc.) gets pissed off at a local prosecutor.
After getting bounced from a jury after a voir dire she thought had not enough voir and too much dire, Claire does what any self-respecting, educated adult would do: goes on a rampage against Prosecuting Attorney Edwin Wessell, hoping to ruin his case against Sarah Swift, who’s accused of killing her husband, John “Tuck” Cunningham. With no reason to think Sarah didn’t in fact kill Tuck, Claire has her work cut out for her. Sarah trumpeted her frustration with Tuck to anyone who’d listen. She has no alibi, and her explanation—that she somehow slept through the shotgun blast that killed her spouse and simply found his body when she awoke and went to the barn on their organic blueberry farm the next morning—sounds absurd even to Claire. Sarah’s court-appointed lawyer, Evan Toffle, strikes her as someone who “lives in his parents’ basement and has yet to lose his virginity.” And the only witness who offers any alternative explanation for Tuck’s demise is Billy, 4-year-old grandson of fellow organic blueberry farmers William and Junie Lund, who insists that on the night in question, Tuck went to the barn to escape the zombies cavorting in a nearby field. Determined to make a fool of Wessell anyway, Claire persists until a figure from Sarah and Tuck’s past casts a new, more sinister light on his death.
Even a dreamboat husband and a dream house don’t seem to satisfy Claire, whose sulky sense of amour-propre makes her teenage daughter, Caron, seem mature.Pub Date: April 7, 2015
ISBN: 978-1-250-01195-4
Page Count: 320
Publisher: Minotaur
Review Posted Online: Feb. 2, 2015
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 15, 2015
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
More of a western than a mystery, like most of Joe’s adventures, and all the better for the open physical clashes that...
Wyoming Game and Fish Warden Joe Pickett (Free Fire, 2007, etc.), once again at the governor’s behest, stalks the wraithlike figure who’s targeting elk hunters for death.
Frank Urman was taken down by a single rifle shot, field-dressed, beheaded and hung upside-down to bleed out. (You won’t believe where his head eventually turns up.) The poker chip found near his body confirms that he’s the third victim of the Wolverine, a killer whose animus against hunters is evidently being whipped up by anti-hunting activist Klamath Moore. The potential effects on the state’s hunting revenues are so calamitous that Governor Spencer Rulon pulls out all the stops, and Pickett is forced to work directly with Wyoming Game and Fish Director Randy Pope, the boss who fired him from his regular job in Saddlestring District. Three more victims will die in rapid succession before Joe is given a more congenial colleague: Nate Romanowski, the outlaw falconer who pledged to protect Joe’s family before he was taken into federal custody. As usual in this acclaimed series, the mystery is slight and its solution eminently guessable long before it’s confirmed by testimony from an unlikely source. But the people and scenes and enduring conflicts that lead up to that solution will stick with you for a long time.
More of a western than a mystery, like most of Joe’s adventures, and all the better for the open physical clashes that periodically release the tension between the scheming adversaries.Pub Date: May 20, 2008
ISBN: 978-0-399-15488-1
Page Count: 320
Publisher: Putnam
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 15, 2008
This ran in the S.E.P. and resulted in more demands for the story in book form than ever recorded. Well, here it is and it is a honey. Imagine ten people, not knowing each other, not knowing why they were invited on a certain island house-party, not knowing their hosts. Then imagine them dead, one by one, until none remained alive, nor any clue to the murderer. Grand suspense, a unique trick, expertly handled.
Pub Date: Feb. 21, 1939
ISBN: 0062073478
Page Count: 272
Publisher: Dodd, Mead
Review Posted Online: Sept. 20, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 1, 1939
SEEN & HEARD
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