An involving whodunit with strong characters who must find a way to work together.
The investigation of a mysterious accident puts a fragile friendship at risk in Millman’s thriller.
In this third installment of the Queen City Crimes series, Det. Ebony Jones is assigned to the case of a man who disappeared after a severe storm popped up while he was kayaking on the Hudson River. The identity of the missing kayaker comes as a blow to Ebony—he’s Kyle Emory, the ex-boyfriend of Ebony’s estranged best friend, attorney Jessie Martin, and the father of Jessie’s daughter, Lily. Ebony has to deliver another shock to Jessie, now reunited with her true love, Judge Hal Samuels: Kyle was engaged to Olivia Vargas, a much-younger social media influencer. Ebony first has to confirm whether Kyle is missing or dead; if he’s dead, she must determine whether his death was an accident, a suicide, or murder. If Kyle is a homicide victim, Ebony will have no shortage of suspects, including Olivia, who’s now entitled to half of Kyle’s life insurance payment; Olivia’s debt-ridden brother, Auggie; and Olivia’s current husband, Raul Esperanza, whom she hasn’t yet divorced. Ebony’s investigation is complicated by her fractured relationship with Jessie and by Jessie’s insistence on conducting her own off-the-books inquiry. The author impressively juggles several viewpoints (including those of Ebony, Jessie, and new district attorney Cindie Tarrico) of the same complex case. She also deftly illustrates the fraught political landscape that the police must navigate when dealing with the wealthy Vargas family (“Carlos Vargas’ words contained the undertone of a command rather than a request, and it was apparent he was used to controlling the situation”) and vividly conveys the breakneck pace of the investigation. Millman creates relatable, flawed characters: There’s Ebony, who is so tentative about reaching toward the future, both in her work and her personal life, and Jessie, who should be looking forward to a future with Hal but instead wallows in her past with Kyle. The tension between the two former close friends effectively raises the stakes of the narrative.
An involving whodunit with strong characters who must find a way to work together.Pub Date: May 30, 2023
ISBN: 9781685122874
Page Count: 368
Publisher: Level Best Books
Review Posted Online: May 24, 2023
Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 15, 2023
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
BOOK REVIEW
As the prosecutor sadly observes: “All this because of a dead buffalo.”
Idyllic Catalina Island turns out to be just as crime infested as the rest of Los Angeles County in the latest series launch by the creator of Harry Bosch, Renée Ballard, and the Lincoln Lawyer.
Det. Sgt. Stilwell has been bounced off the county homicide squad and rusticized to Catalina, where the exclusive Black Marlin Club won’t admit even four-term Avalon Mayor Doug Allen to full membership and the most serious infraction seems to be the killing and cutting up of a buffalo, presumably by Henry Gaston, who operates Island Mystery Tours when he’s not threatening endangered species. All that changes with the discovery of a body sunk in the surrounding waters. The corpse, most recognizable by its streak of purple hair, is that of Leigh-Anne Moss, a Black Marlin server recently fired for fraternizing with members and guests she sees as potential sugar daddies. Stilwell is sufficiently invested in her murder to compete vigorously over jurisdiction with Rex Ahearn, the LA County homicide detective who kept his job when Stilwell lost his. Their rivalry, fueled by mutual contempt, is only the first hint that Stilwell will end up fighting his counterparts in law enforcement and local government at least as hard as he fights crooks like hit man Merris Spivak and Oscar “Baby Head” Terranova, Henry’s boss, who comes under sharper scrutiny when Henry disappears and ends up dead himself. Connelly handles his hero’s obligatory romance with assistant harbormaster Tash Dano and his increasingly wary alliance with assistant D.A. Monika Juarez with equal professionalism, and if the wrap-up leaves some loose ends dangling, well, that’s what franchises are for.
As the prosecutor sadly observes: “All this because of a dead buffalo.”Pub Date: May 20, 2025
ISBN: 9780316588485
Page Count: 352
Publisher: Little, Brown
Review Posted Online: April 19, 2025
Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 15, 2025
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
© Copyright 2025 Kirkus Media LLC. All Rights Reserved.
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