A confused and ultimately unsatisfying mystery thriller.
In Ojih’s debut mystery novel, a newspaper editor gets entangled in a murder investigation.
It’s 1975, andHarry Robertsonworks as the news editor for a small newspaper in the sleepy Baltimore suburb of Middle River, Maryland. The paper is owned by the wealthy Rev. Reginald Waters, who also happens to be Harry’s pastor. One day, Harry, who’s on the cusp of a promotion, gets an unusual request from the reverend, who is about to leave for Europe for several months: He needs Harry to pick up his daughter from the airport and drive her to the family’s large estate. It turns out that Harry and Brittany Waters, a recent college dropout, have palpable sexual chemistry. Although he’s afraid that word will get back to the pastor, Harry sleeps with Brittany and agrees to meet her in Atlantic City, New Jersey, later that summer. Later, he learns that she was possibly involved with a Trenton gangster who was murdered a few years earlier. Still, Harry heads out to see her, but he discovers her corpse in the backyard of the house she’s rented. Harry quickly flees, reasonably sure that nobody will know he was there, and heads back to Middle River. Soon, police discover Brittany’s body, and Harry finds himself at the center of a swarm of reporters, cops, politicians, and mobsters, each with their own motivations and loyalties. Can Harry keep himself out of jail and help identify the real killer? He quickly comes to understand something his father said to him long ago: “Nobody chooses the devil, son; the devil chooses you.”
Harry’s story features many of the classic tropes that fans of noirish mysteries will enjoy: a femme fatale, political intrigue, and a shocking murder in a lonely beach house. However, the novel’s momentum is often impeded by distracting details. For example, Harry works for the tiny Middle River Times, and the promotion he’s angling for is at the paper’s satellite office in Trenton; it’s never explained why a local Maryland paper has a second office in a different and nonadjacent state. The author also shows a lack of facility with conversational speech and, especially, figurative language: “I’m as unwelcome to her as an outbreak of Ebola fever,” Brittany says at one point, and a bit later, Harry awkwardly narrates, “From my personal experience with women, I have come to conclude that a relationship with a woman like Brittany is like food in a microwave oven: it can turn from lukewarm to scalding hot in a matter of a few days.” In addition, Harry, who seems more concerned about his own job security than the fact that a woman he knew is dead, comes off as a far less sympathetic protagonist than the author seems to mean him to be. The overall plot is convoluted, and the stakes for the various characters are often unclear. In the end, the novel never finds the sort of smooth momentum that appeals to longtime mystery readers.
A confused and ultimately unsatisfying mystery thriller.Pub Date: July 20, 2018
ISBN: 978-1-71784-927-4
Page Count: 318
Publisher: Independently Published
Review Posted Online: May 12, 2022
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
A top-class cozy infused with dry wit and charming characters who draw you in and leave you wanting more, please.
Four residents of Coopers Chase, a British retirement village, compete with the police to solve a murder in this debut novel.
The Thursday Murder Club started out with a group of septuagenarians working on old murder cases culled from the files of club founder Elizabeth Best’s friend Penny Gray, a former police officer who's now comatose in the village's nursing home. Elizabeth used to have an unspecified job, possibly as a spy, that has left her with a large network of helpful sources. Joyce Meadowcroft is a former nurse who chronicles their deeds. Psychiatrist Ibrahim Arif and well-known political firebrand Ron Ritchie complete the group. They charm Police Constable Donna De Freitas, who, visiting to give a talk on safety at Coopers Chase, finds the residents sharp as tacks. Built with drug money on the grounds of a convent, Coopers Chase is a high-end development conceived by loathsome Ian Ventham and maintained by dangerous crook Tony Curran, who’s about to be fired and replaced with wary but willing Bogdan Jankowski. Ventham has big plans for the future—as soon as he’s removed the nuns' bodies from the cemetery. When Curran is murdered, DCI Chris Hudson gets the case, but Elizabeth uses her influence to get the ambitious De Freitas included, giving the Thursday Club a police source. What follows is a fascinating primer in detection as British TV personality Osman allows the members to use their diverse skills to solve a series of interconnected crimes.
A top-class cozy infused with dry wit and charming characters who draw you in and leave you wanting more, please.Pub Date: Sept. 22, 2020
ISBN: 978-1-98-488096-3
Page Count: 368
Publisher: Pamela Dorman/Viking
Review Posted Online: June 30, 2020
Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 15, 2020
A vivid, exciting page-turner from one of our most interesting authors of historical fiction.
When a man accused of rape turns up dead, an Early American town seeks justice amid rumors and controversy.
Lawhon’s fifth work of historical fiction is inspired by the true story and diaries of midwife Martha Ballard of Hallowell, Maine, a character she brings to life brilliantly here. As Martha tells her patient in an opening chapter set in 1789, “You need not fear….In all my years attending women in childbirth, I have never lost a mother.” This track record grows in numerous compelling scenes of labor and delivery, particularly one in which Martha has to clean up after the mistakes of a pompous doctor educated at Harvard, one of her nemeses in a town that roils with gossip and disrespect for women’s abilities. Supposedly, the only time a midwife can testify in court is regarding paternity when a woman gives birth out of wedlock—but Martha also takes the witness stand in the rape case against a dead man named Joshua Burgess and his living friend Col. Joseph North, whose role as judge in local court proceedings has made the victim, Rebecca Foster, reluctant to make her complaint public. Further complications are numerous: North has control over the Ballard family's lease on their property; Rebecca is carrying the child of one of her rapists; Martha’s son was seen fighting with Joshua Burgess on the day of his death. Lawhon weaves all this into a richly satisfying drama that moves suspensefully between childbed, courtroom, and the banks of the Kennebec River. The undimmed romance between 40-something Martha and her husband, Ephraim, adds a racy flair to the proceedings. Knowing how rare the quality of their relationship is sharpens the intensity of Martha’s gaze as she watches the romantic lives of her grown children unfold. As she did with Nancy Wake in Code Name Hélène (2020), Lawhon creates a stirring portrait of a real-life heroine and, as in all her books, includes an endnote with detailed background.
A vivid, exciting page-turner from one of our most interesting authors of historical fiction.Pub Date: Dec. 5, 2023
ISBN: 9780385546874
Page Count: 448
Publisher: Doubleday
Review Posted Online: Aug. 12, 2023
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 15, 2023
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