by Joseph Allen ‧ RELEASE DATE: Sept. 23, 2016
A whodunit that starts off with an intriguing premise but makes its way to an unsatisfying conclusion.
A mystery novel from Allen (Rocky Point Road, 2016, etc.), set in late-1990s New York City, about the death of a famous harpsichordist.
Hugo Miller is a middle-aged New Yorker who works in public relations, and who’s successful enough to have an apartment right in Times Square. Fred Glamorgan, a music professor at UCLA and an old friend of Hugo’s, comes into town to visit and the two go out for a night at the Metropolitan Opera. Before the show, they visit one of Fred’s friends, the well-known harpsichordist Hubert Fulmer, who offers Hugo a hit of hashish. From there, things get hazy: the hash is spiked, leading to Hugo getting kicked out of the opera for appearing drop-dead drunk, and, more ominously, causing Hubert to jump out of his apartment’s window to his death. Or was he pushed? That’s the mystery that Hugo attempts to solve, driven by the fact that he, too, could’ve easily met the same end. Assisting him in this endeavor are his friend Ruth Jensen and his roommate Carlos, an ex-cop. Mike di Saronno, the detective assigned to the case, is also on hand to give official assistance to the three amateur sleuths. As they start to piece together the events of Hubert’s fatal night, the possible murder seems linked to a lost manuscript of an opera by the 17th-century Italian composer Claudio Monteverdi, which may or may not exist, and which Hubert may or may not have had in his possession. More worryingly, Hugo starts noticing that people are following him around the city, suggesting that more sinister forces may be involved in the search. Things get even stranger—and more dangerous—as Hugo investigates further. Allen certainly appears to have a love for Manhattan and its environs, as he adoringly writes of the many buildings and restaurants that his characters visit. Sometimes, though, he gets bogged down in details—recounting exactly what Hugo eats at every stop, for instance, or the many benefits of first-class air travel. Hugo narrates the story in a light, easygoing way, but without much urgency, which deflates the intrigue of the plot; as a result, the stakes never seem to be that high. Hugo’s fluid sexuality—he’s a divorced father who also has an eye for men—is the most engaging part of his character, and the story shows some heart when this element becomes more central to the plot. However, it’s not quite enough to save this meandering mystery.
A whodunit that starts off with an intriguing premise but makes its way to an unsatisfying conclusion.Pub Date: Sept. 23, 2016
ISBN: 978-1-5390-5168-8
Page Count: 278
Publisher: CreateSpace
Review Posted Online: Nov. 1, 2016
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
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by C.J. Box ‧ RELEASE DATE: July 28, 2015
A suspenseful, professional-grade north country procedural whose heroine, a deft mix of compassion and attitude, would be...
Box takes another break from his highly successful Joe Pickett series (Stone Cold, 2014, etc.) for a stand-alone about a police detective, a developmentally delayed boy, and a package everyone in North Dakota wants to grab.
Cassandra Dewell can’t leave Montana’s Lewis and Clark County fast enough for her new job as chief investigator for Jon Kirkbride, sheriff of Bakken County. She leaves behind no memories worth keeping: her husband is dead, her boss has made no bones about disliking her, and she’s looking forward to new responsibilities and the higher salary underwritten by North Dakota’s sudden oil boom. But Bakken County has its own issues. For one thing, it’s cold—a whole lot colder than the coldest weather Cassie’s ever imagined. For another, the job she turns out to have been hired for—leading an investigation her new boss doesn’t feel he can entrust to his own force—makes her queasy. The biggest problem, though, is one she doesn’t know about until it slaps her in the face. A fatal car accident that was anything but accidental has jarred loose a stash of methamphetamines and cash that’s become the center of a battle between the Sons of Freedom, Bakken County’s traditional drug sellers, and MS-13, the Salvadorian upstarts who are muscling in on their territory. It’s a setup that leaves scant room for law enforcement officers or for Kyle Westergaard, the 12-year-old paperboy damaged since birth by fetal alcohol syndrome, who’s walked away from the wreck with a prize all too many people would kill for.
A suspenseful, professional-grade north country procedural whose heroine, a deft mix of compassion and attitude, would be welcome to return and tie up the gaping loose end Box leaves. The unrelenting cold makes this the perfect beach read.Pub Date: July 28, 2015
ISBN: 978-0-312-58321-7
Page Count: 272
Publisher: Minotaur
Review Posted Online: April 21, 2015
Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 15, 2015
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by J.A. Jance ‧ RELEASE DATE: April 2, 2019
Proficient but eminently predictable. Amid all the time shifts and embedded backstories, the most surprising feature is how...
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A convicted killer’s list of five people he wants dead runs the gamut from the wife he’s already had murdered to franchise heroine Ali Reynolds.
Back in the day, women came from all over to consult Santa Clarita fertility specialist Dr. Edward Gilchrist. Many of them left his care happily pregnant, never dreaming that the father of the babies they carried was none other than the physician himself, who donated his own sperm rather than that of the handsome, athletic, disease-free men pictured in his scrapbook. When Alexandra Munsey’s son, Evan, is laid low by the kidney disease he’s inherited from his biological father and she returns to Gilchrist in search of the donor’s medical records, the roof begins to fall in on him. By the time it’s done falling, he’s serving a life sentence in Folsom Prison for commissioning the death of his wife, Dawn, the former nurse and sometime egg donor who’d turned on him. With nothing left to lose, Gilchrist tattoos himself with the initials of five people he blames for his fall: Dawn; Leo Manuel Aurelio, the hit man he’d hired to dispose of her; Kaitlyn Todd, the nurse/receptionist who took Dawn’s place; Alex Munsey, whose search for records upset his apple cart; and Ali Reynolds, the TV reporter who’d helped put Alex in touch with the dozen other women who formed the Progeny Project because their children looked just like hers. No matter that Ali’s been out of both California and the news business for years; Gilchrist and his enablers know that revenge can’t possibly be served too cold. Wonder how far down that list they’ll get before Ali, aided once more by Frigg, the methodical but loose-cannon AI first introduced in Duel to the Death (2018), turns on them?
Proficient but eminently predictable. Amid all the time shifts and embedded backstories, the most surprising feature is how little the boundary-challenged AI, who gets into the case more or less inadvertently, differs from your standard human sidekick with issues.Pub Date: April 2, 2019
ISBN: 978-1-5011-5101-9
Page Count: 352
Publisher: Gallery Books/Simon & Schuster
Review Posted Online: Feb. 18, 2019
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 1, 2019
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