Robust characters populate a crafty and entertaining whodunit.
A woman moves into her late aunt’s Florida home but learns a killer may be lurking in the neighborhood in this murder mystery.
Dawn Andersen and her parents are understandably distraught over Aunt Amy’s murder in South Florida. But after the Ohio family heads to Amy’s cottage in Manatee Beach, 25-year-old Dawn thinks she’s found her new home. Her parents—who now own the house—reluctantly let her move in, especially because authorities have arrested the person they believe is Amy’s killer. Dawn quits her job in Columbus but isn’t even settled into her new home when she spots a hulking figure loitering in the vicinity. Later discovering that this person is her next-door neighbor does nothing to ease her anxiety. Unfortunately, it soon turns out the alleged murderer has an alibi, and police initially connect two other deaths with Amy’s, both before and after the homicide. As Dawn makes friends among Manatee Beach residents, as well as a potential enemy or two, she looks for answers in evidence as different as the “mysterious man” in her aunt’s life and a possible link between Amy and at least one of the other victims. Most disturbing of all, however, is the likelihood that the murderer is someone in the small Florida community. Moore (Murder at the Country Club, 2018, etc.) excels at character development. Dawn is a smashing protagonist who’s trusting but not naive and who doesn’t abide insolence, including that of the postal carrier who litters his discourse with sexist epithets, such as “girlie.” But the neighborhood comprises numerous well-rounded characters, making it all the more difficult for readers to identify the killer. A subplot involving someone in a (probable) romance with Dawn isn’t fully developed, although this hardly affects the solid mystery. Moore’s pithy writing ably couples the small-scale setting with an often moody environment. For example, tension rises in the final act, which unfolds during an impending—and then full-blown—storm, complete with a power failure and resultant darkness.
Robust characters populate a crafty and entertaining whodunit.Pub Date: Nov. 14, 2019
ISBN: 978-1-70789-975-3
Page Count: 428
Publisher: Self
Review Posted Online: Feb. 26, 2020
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
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
A tale that’s hard to believe but easy to swallow in a single gulp.
A bear is hunting prey in Wyoming’s Bighorns. And not just any bear.
It’s bad enough that Clay Hutmacher, who manages the Double Diamond Ranch, has lost his son, Clay Jr., to a vicious attack by a grizzly bear. What’s much worse is that Clay Jr.—who’d been about to pop the question to game warden Joe Pickett’s daughter, Sheridan—is only the first of the victims over an exceptionally broad geographical area. Marshal Marvin Bertignolli is clawed and bitten to death over in Hanna. Sgt. Ryan Winner is found bleeding out north of Rawlins. Former Twelve Sleep County prosecutor Dulcie Schalk, one of two survivors of an ambush, doesn’t survive her final encounter. The four experts chosen to kill the grizzly rope Joe into their expedition, but since their quarry keeps turning up far from the last sighting, the most meaningful confrontation the Predator Attack Team has is with a pair of Mama Bears, animal rights activists who demand due process for Tisiphone, as they’ve dubbed the presumed killer. Box, who’s far too canny to leave Tisiphone alone on center stage, follows Joe’s old antagonist Dallas Cates as the ex–rodeo star is released from prison and embarks on his revenge tour, which takes him to Lee Ogburn-Russell, an inventor whose life Dallas saved, and Axel Soledad, a correspondent who shares so many enemies with Dallas that he suggests they go after them together. Franchise fans will appreciate new details about Joe’s complicated family, the obligatory high-country landscapes, and yet another corrupt law enforcer.
A tale that’s hard to believe but easy to swallow in a single gulp.Pub Date: Feb. 27, 2024
ISBN: 9780593331347
Page Count: 384
Publisher: Putnam
Review Posted Online: Jan. 5, 2024
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 1, 2024
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