Karen’s sixth case (Cold and Pure and Very Dead, 2000, etc.) has everything you’d expect from an academic mystery—civilized...
Going up for tenure turns out to be only the second biggest strain on professor Karen Pelletier’s life.
Each department at Enfield College is restricted to a single tenure appointment this year, and the English faculty must choose between promoting a colleague who’s published two books and a slew of scholarly articles and a Native American who never even finished his dissertation but argues that he should be judged on his “speakings” rather than his writings. Karen seethes as Ned Hilton, the English department’s new chair, indicates his preference for Joseph Lone Wolf. Soon enough, however, Karen’s problems are alleviated. Joe is no longer her unstoppable rival for the promotion but a corpse, and she’s no longer the underdog but a leading suspect in his murder. Threatened with arrest by Lt. Neil Boylan, who has it in for her sweetie, Lt. Charlie Piotrowski (off in Iraq with National Guard), Karen wonders forlornly, “Would I ever get tenure after that?” The mystery is a trifle—Karen comes across the essential clue quite by accident at the 11th hour—but the skewering of identity politics and political correctness is real enough, even if the ending is just a little pat.
Karen’s sixth case (Cold and Pure and Very Dead, 2000, etc.) has everything you’d expect from an academic mystery—civilized dialogue, literary allusions, venal administrators, miasmal paranoia—and not a smidgen more.Pub Date: Jan. 1, 2010
ISBN: 978-1-59058-585-6
Page Count: 240
Publisher: Poisoned Pen
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Nov. 15, 2009
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
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
One protest from an outraged innocent says it all: “This is America. This is Wyoming.”
Once again, Wyoming game warden Joe Pickett gets mixed up in a killing whose principal suspect is his old friend Nate Romanowski, whose attempts to live off the grid keep breaking down in a series of felony charges.
If Judge Hewitt hadn’t bent over to pick up a spoon that had fallen from his dinner table, the sniper set up nearly a mile from his house in the gated community of the Eagle Mountain Club would have ended his life. As it was, the victim was Sue Hewitt, leaving the judge alive and free to rail and threaten anyone he suspected of the shooting. Incoming Twelve Sleep County Sheriff Brendan Kapelow’s interest in using the case to promote his political ambitions and the judge’s inability to see further than his nose make them the perfect targets for a frame-up of Nate, who just wants to be left alone in the middle of nowhere to train his falcons and help his bride, Liv Brannon, raise their baby, Kestrel. Nor are the sniper, the sheriff, and the judge Nate’s only enemies. Orlando Panfile has been sent to Wyoming by the Sinaloan drug cartel to avenge the deaths of the four assassins whose careers Nate and Joe ended last time out (Wolf Pack, 2019). So it’s up to Joe, with some timely data from his librarian wife, Marybeth, to hire a lawyer for Nate, make sure he doesn’t bust out of jail before his trial, identify the real sniper, who continues to take an active role in the proceedings, and somehow protect him from a killer who regards Nate’s arrest as an unwelcome complication. That’s quite a tall order for someone who can’t shoot straight, who keeps wrecking his state-issued vehicles, and whose appalling mother-in-law, Missy Vankeuren Hand, has returned from her latest European jaunt to suck up all the oxygen in Twelve Sleep County to hustle some illegal drugs for her cancer-stricken sixth husband. But fans of this outstanding series will know better than to place their money against Joe.
One protest from an outraged innocent says it all: “This is America. This is Wyoming.”Pub Date: March 3, 2020
ISBN: 978-0-525-53823-3
Page Count: 368
Publisher: Putnam
Review Posted Online: Jan. 12, 2020
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 1, 2020
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