A sympathetic and clever protagonist is the point of interest in this subtle, subdued family mystery.
In Costanzo’s novel, a directionless middle-aged man uncovers his late father’s secrets.
Dexter Renshaw is a 48-year-old former copy editor who has been placidly watching his life pass him by since the local newspaper went digital. After the death of his father, who was a police detective, Dex tries to tend to his stressed mother, his distant son, and his dismissive ex-wife—none of whom really seem to need him—when a stranger named Novack approaches him with a strange story. Novack claims that Dex’s father had put him away for a carjacking yearsearlier but took pity on him and stored Novack’s most important belongings in a secret safe deposit box, to which he now hopes Dex can produce the key. Passive to a fault, Dex brushes away his initial suspicions about Novack’s story and hands over the key—unwittingly setting himself up for a brutal attack that leaves him limping, living with his mother, and filled with nagging doubt about his father. In the months that follow, Dex slowly digs through the facts of the carjacking, interviews several people involved, and even pokes around a local encampment of unhoused people where Novack was said to have been seen. He soon discovers that his father had indeed been keeping some big secrets. Costanzo’s premise is immediately intriguing and Dex’s violent attack gives the story a jolt of excitement, but what follows is a much slower, more subtle style of mystery. There are few thrills and very little suspense in Dex’s investigation, which may disappoint readers eager for more lively revelations. Instead, the author digs into the thoughts of his amiable main character; Dex’s dry wit keeps him endearing. (Recovering from his injuries, Dex reflects on “the old dancing dog theory. People will be so amazed just to see me dancing that they won’t even notice whether I’m doing it well or not.”) The eventual revelations are disappointingly mundane, but Dex’s reflections along the way about fathers and sons, family expectations, and the way the world shifts around those just trying to get by provide plenty of drama.
A sympathetic and clever protagonist is the point of interest in this subtle, subdued family mystery.Pub Date: Jan. 6, 2025
ISBN: 9798218559212
Page Count: 246
Publisher: N/A
Review Posted Online: April 4, 2025
Kirkus Reviews Issue: June 1, 2025
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
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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