Despite its reliance on well-worn cozy tropes (is every local cop a secret heir to millions?), Chase’s light touch makes...
A Southern belle finds herself up to her delicate neck in murder.
Like her beloved cat, Penelope, Lacy Marie Crocker (Cat Got Your Cash, 2017, etc.) seems to have landed on her feet. Since fleeing the Big Apple and her cheating fiance, she finds it comforting to be back in the Big Easy despite occasional intrusions by her socialite mom, Violet Conti-Crocker. Lacy loves owning Furry Godmother, where she adapts her knack for couture to design fancy dress for pets. She’s created lacy caps and capes for Mrs. Ham’s Llama Mamas and costumed the entire Creative Cavies Easter Celebration. But when she goes to deliver 12 dozen dreidel-shaped biscuits to the Normans for their Saint Berdoodle’s Bark-Mitzvah, she finds the scene shrouded in crime-scene tape. Somebody locked Wallace Becker, owner of the Cuddle Brigade pet care service, in the walk-in freezer, where he perished. Worse yet, Lacy’s father was the last to see Becker alive. At times like these, a Dixie blossom needs a knight in shining armor, and Lacy has more than her share. First on the scene is Chase Hawthorne, her best friend Scarlet’s brother-in-law and heir to the Hawthorne fortune. Close behind stands Detective Jack Oliver, who inherited millions from his Grandpa Smacker but prefers to keep his wealth on the down low and spend his days catching crooks. While the boys jockey for the inside rail, Lacy isn’t afraid to forge ahead on her own, hoping to catch a killer and clear her dad’s name.
Despite its reliance on well-worn cozy tropes (is every local cop a secret heir to millions?), Chase’s light touch makes this a tale worth telling.Pub Date: Sept. 12, 2017
ISBN: 978-1-68331-283-3
Page Count: 320
Publisher: Crooked Lane
Review Posted Online: June 19, 2017
Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 1, 2017
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
A murder is committed in a stalled transcontinental train in the Balkans, and every passenger has a watertight alibi. But Hercule Poirot finds a way.
**Note: This classic Agatha Christie mystery was originally published in England as Murder on the Orient Express, but in the United States as Murder in the Calais Coach. Kirkus reviewed the book in 1934 under the original US title, but we changed the title in our database to the now recognizable title Murder on the Orient Express. This is the only name now known for the book. The reason the US publisher, Dodd Mead, did not use the UK title in 1934 was to avoid confusion with the 1932 Graham Greene novel, Orient Express.
Pub Date: Feb. 28, 1934
ISBN: 978-0062073495
Page Count: -
Publisher: Dodd, Mead
Review Posted Online: Sept. 20, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 1, 1934
The parts with Nero Wolfe, the only character Goldsborough brings to life, are almost worth waiting for.
In Archie Goodwin's 15th adventure since the death of his creator, Rex Stout, his gossipy Aunt Edna Wainwright lures him from 34th Street to his carefully unnamed hometown in Ohio to investigate the death of a well-hated bank president.
Tom Blankenship, the local police chief, thinks there’s no case since Logan Mulgrew shot himself. But Archie’s mother, Marjorie Goodwin, and Aunt Edna know lots of people with reason to have killed him. Mulgrew drove rival banker Charles Purcell out of business, forcing Purcell to get work as an auto mechanic, and foreclosed on dairy farmer Harold Mapes’ spread. Lester Newman is convinced that Mulgrew murdered his ailing wife, Lester’s sister, so that he could romance her nurse, Carrie Yeager. And Donna Newman, Lester’s granddaughter, might have had an eye on her great-uncle’s substantial estate. Nor is Archie limited to mulling over his relatives’ gossip, for Trumpet reporter Verna Kay Padgett, whose apartment window was shot out the night her column raised questions about the alleged suicide, is perfectly willing to publish a floridly actionable summary of the leading suspects that delights her editor, shocks Archie, and infuriates everyone else. The one person missing is Archie’s boss, Nero Wolfe (Death of an Art Collector, 2019, etc.), and fans will breathe a sigh of relief when he appears at Marjorie’s door, debriefs Archie, notices a telltale clue, prepares dinner for everyone, sleeps on his discovery, and arranges a meeting of all parties in Marjorie’s living room in which he names the killer.
The parts with Nero Wolfe, the only character Goldsborough brings to life, are almost worth waiting for.Pub Date: May 19, 2020
ISBN: 978-1-5040-5988-6
Page Count: 248
Publisher: Mysterious Press
Review Posted Online: March 1, 2020
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 15, 2020
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