Yet another entry in the classic genre of the English country-house murder, clichéd but competent.
English gentleman and amateur detective Drew Farthering does a spot of investigating in his fifth case (Dressed for Death, 2016, etc.).
On a dark and stormy night, Drew gets a call from Hubert “Beaky” Bloodworth, one of the old boys from Eton. Beaky has only just inherited the family manse, where, unfortunately, it seems someone has bashed in the head of the local vicar with one of the stones from his own churchyard. So Mr. and Mrs. Farthering take a jaunt to Yorkshire to see what they can uncover. Beaky’s bride, Sabrina, is rather too glamorous for village life—or indeed for Beaky—and seems a bit chummy with rakish gamekeeper Rhys Delwyn. The other local gentry are tackling a feud with the Bloodworths that goes back decades. And local scoundrel and poacher Jack Midgley is buying rounds in the pub more often than his position should allow. The plot thickens when Sabrina’s old nanny is found dead in her home. After Drew spends a night alone on the moors, waiting for the murderer’s assignation with Midgley, he winds up very nearly accused of the crimes himself. But the ending, while heavily foreshadowed, neatly ties up all the loose ends into a tidy package of justice.
Yet another entry in the classic genre of the English country-house murder, clichéd but competent.Pub Date: Jan. 31, 2017
ISBN: 978-0-7642-1828-6
Page Count: 336
Publisher: Bethany House
Review Posted Online: Nov. 6, 2016
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Nov. 15, 2016
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
These letters from some important executive Down Below, to one of the junior devils here on earth, whose job is to corrupt mortals, are witty and written in a breezy style seldom found in religious literature. The author quotes Luther, who said: "The best way to drive out the devil, if he will not yield to texts of Scripture, is to jeer and flout him, for he cannot bear scorn." This the author does most successfully, for by presenting some of our modern and not-so-modern beliefs as emanating from the devil's headquarters, he succeeds in making his reader feel like an ass for ever having believed in such ideas. This kind of presentation gives the author a tremendous advantage over the reader, however, for the more timid reader may feel a sense of guilt after putting down this book. It is a clever book, and for the clever reader, rather than the too-earnest soul.
Pub Date: Jan. 1, 1942
ISBN: 0060652934
Page Count: 53
Publisher: Macmillan
Review Posted Online: Oct. 17, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: June 15, 1943
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