Pleasing characters and romantic interludes brighten an otherwise mundane mystery.
A Valentine’s Day fundraiser is loaded with surprises, including murder.
Callie Aspen gave up her job as a worldwide tour guide to help her great aunt Iphy run her tea shop in Heart’s Harbor, Maine. After several dangerous adventures revolving around Haywood Hall (Sweet Tea and Secrets, 2019, etc.), Callie and Iphy have been appointed to keep the stately home running as a venue for town activities. They’ve cooked up a fundraiser featuring a book swap and sale complete with an expert appraiser, an area to meet and greet shelter pets, and a concert. The arrival of Sean Strong from Vienna as a last-minute replacement for the baritone originally scheduled gives Iphy a shock she refuses to explain. And Callie’s careful plans are undermined when her friend Quinn upsets his girlfriend, Peggy, who drives off, leaving her kids behind. Then the assistant to librarian Mrs. Forrester tells Callie she’s found Mr. King, the book expert, dead. Callie calls her boyfriend, Deputy Ace Falk, to the scene. Ace, who already has his hands full with the sheriff out sick, is never happy when Callie meddles in murder. The evidence suggests that Mrs. Forrester may have stabbed King with a pair of scissors. Certainly the man was arrogant and rude, but was his behavior enough to drive a stranger to murder him? Ace is furious when he finds out that Quinn upset his sister Peggy, who really likes Quinn but can’t get over the death of her husband. Despite Ace’s disapproval of her activities, Callie can’t help sleuthing, especially when she finds out that King may have been cheating people in his appraisals. She also wants to get to the bottom of Iphy’s relationship with Strong, who soon becomes a murder suspect. Risking her relationship with Ace, Callie continues to search for clues and question anyone who might have answers in her hunt for the truth.
Pleasing characters and romantic interludes brighten an otherwise mundane mystery.Pub Date: Feb. 11, 2020
ISBN: 978-1-64385-288-1
Page Count: 272
Publisher: Crooked Lane
Review Posted Online: Nov. 9, 2019
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Dec. 1, 2019
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
More of a western than a mystery, like most of Joe’s adventures, and all the better for the open physical clashes that...
Wyoming Game and Fish Warden Joe Pickett (Free Fire, 2007, etc.), once again at the governor’s behest, stalks the wraithlike figure who’s targeting elk hunters for death.
Frank Urman was taken down by a single rifle shot, field-dressed, beheaded and hung upside-down to bleed out. (You won’t believe where his head eventually turns up.) The poker chip found near his body confirms that he’s the third victim of the Wolverine, a killer whose animus against hunters is evidently being whipped up by anti-hunting activist Klamath Moore. The potential effects on the state’s hunting revenues are so calamitous that Governor Spencer Rulon pulls out all the stops, and Pickett is forced to work directly with Wyoming Game and Fish Director Randy Pope, the boss who fired him from his regular job in Saddlestring District. Three more victims will die in rapid succession before Joe is given a more congenial colleague: Nate Romanowski, the outlaw falconer who pledged to protect Joe’s family before he was taken into federal custody. As usual in this acclaimed series, the mystery is slight and its solution eminently guessable long before it’s confirmed by testimony from an unlikely source. But the people and scenes and enduring conflicts that lead up to that solution will stick with you for a long time.
More of a western than a mystery, like most of Joe’s adventures, and all the better for the open physical clashes that periodically release the tension between the scheming adversaries.Pub Date: May 20, 2008
ISBN: 978-0-399-15488-1
Page Count: 320
Publisher: Putnam
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 15, 2008
It's clearly Cat’s meow, and if you respond positively to her tempestuous carryings-on, then you'll probably forgive Iles...
A serial killer who puts the bite on victims is the villainous center of a long, long psychothriller, as southern Gothic as it gets.
Dr. Catherine (Cat) Ferry is a forensic odontologist, which is to say “an expert on human teeth and the damage they can do.” In four cases enlivening the New Orleans crime scene, however, the damage done is mostly posthumous, the victims having been snuffed first, gnawed on afterward. Cat loves being called in to help NOPD investigations. She also loves a hunky homicide detective named Sean Regan. At some point, Sean says, he will leave his wife and kids for her, but it’s a point of diminishing probability. Hard to really blame Sean, feckless as he is, since Cat’s not only bipolar, alcoholic and promiscuous but also apparently content to remain that way. And then, leaning over the chewed-upon corpse of Arthur LeGendre, she has a panic attack that amounts to an epiphany. Something’s wrong, she intuits, and makes a beeline for home in Natchez, Miss. Somehow, she has sensed a connection between the New Orleans murders and dark doings in her own past. Twenty years ago, when Cat was eight, her daddy was shot to death. A mysterious assailant, grandpapa Kirkland has insisted through the years, but Cat has always found that difficult to accept. Now, in her old bedroom in the family manse, she unexpectedly discovers forensic evidence that supports her skepticism—and discovers as well gleanings of a terrible secret. In the meantime, back in New Orleans, the investigation has heated up, and here too it seems Cat had it right. Murder in New Orleans and murder in Natchez are connected by the same kind of terrible secret.
It's clearly Cat’s meow, and if you respond positively to her tempestuous carryings-on, then you'll probably forgive Iles (The Footprints of God, 2003, etc.) his unabashed quest for bestsellerdom.Pub Date: Feb. 15, 2005
ISBN: 0-7432-3470-7
Page Count: 512
Publisher: Scribner
Review Posted Online: June 24, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 1, 2005
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