Wassmer’s main contributions to the familiar village murder-cum-not-quite-romance formula are a strong sense of...
A debut novel from British TV writer Wassmer (More Than Just Coincidence, 2010) set in an English seacoast town where life would be perfect if it weren’t for the murders.
Now that Charlie, the son she’s raised without a husband, has left for Kent University in Canterbury, Pearl Nolan is restless. The Whitstable Pearl, the seafood restaurant she owns and operates, doesn’t come close to absorbing all her energy. So she returns to law enforcement—not as the police officer she was before Charlie arrived but as a private investigator. After sorting out Phillip Caffery’s missing dog and refusing Doug Stroud’s request to check up on Vincent Rowe, the fisherman Stroud has loaned money to to help reseed the shrinking oyster beds, she lands a doozy of a third case when she goes to Vinnie’s boat to warn him that Stroud is on the warpath and finds her longtime friend dead in the water, an anchor chain wrapped around his ankle. DCI Mike McGuire, recently transferred from the Met to the Canterbury CID, is far from convinced that Vinnie was murdered, but the death very shortly afterward of Stroud himself offers a powerful new argument. As McGuire and Pearl debate how to parse the evidence, Pearl can’t help but notice that the conveniently widowed McGuire, who’s still grieving the fiancee he lost a year ago, is a most attractive figure of a man. Even taken together, the two don’t add up to much of a sleuthing team, and readers looking for the pleasures of an old-school whodunit are likely to find this one slow to get started and rushed at the end.
Wassmer’s main contributions to the familiar village murder-cum-not-quite-romance formula are a strong sense of atmosphere—the town is much more vivid than its individual inhabitants—and a keen eye for the places where everyday frictions between perfectly nice people shade off into something altogether darker. First of a series.Pub Date: Sept. 18, 2018
ISBN: 978-1-4721-1648-2
Page Count: 320
Publisher: Constable/Little, Brown UK
Review Posted Online: July 1, 2018
Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 15, 2018
Everyone is this meticulously crafted novel might be playing—or being played by—everyone else.
A hint of the supernatural spices the latest from a mystery master as two detectives try to probe the secrets teenage girls keep—and the lies they tell—after murder at a posh boarding school.
The Dublin novelist (Broken Harbor,2012, etc.) has few peers in her combination of literary stylishness and intricate, clockwork plotting. Here, French challenges herself and her readers with a narrative strategy that finds chapters alternating between two different time frames and points of view. One strand concerns four girls at exclusive St. Kilda’s who are so close they vow they won’t even have boyfriends. Four other girls from the school are their archrivals, more conventional and socially active. The novel pits the girls against each other almost as two gangs, with the plot pivoting on the death of a rich boy from a nearby school who had been sneaking out to see at least two of the girls. The second strand features the two detectives who spend a long day and night at the school, many months after the unsolved murder. Narrating these chapters is Stephen, a detective assigned to cold cases, who receives an unexpected visit from one of the girls, Holly, a daughter of one of Stephen’s colleagues on the force, who brings a postcard she’d found on a bulletin board known as “The Secret Place” that says “I know who killed him.” The ambitious Stephen, who has a history with both the girl and her father, brings the postcard to Conway, a hard-bitten female detective whose case this had been. The chapters narrated by Stephen concern their day of interrogation and investigation at the school, while the alternating ones from the girls’ perspectives cover the school year leading up to the murder and its aftermath. Beyond the murder mystery, which leaves the reader in suspense throughout, the novel explores the mysteries of friendship, loyalty and betrayal, not only among adolescents, but within the police force as well.
Everyone is this meticulously crafted novel might be playing—or being played by—everyone else.Pub Date: Sept. 2, 2014
ISBN: 978-0-670-02632-6
Page Count: 464
Publisher: Viking
Review Posted Online: July 1, 2014
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 1, 2014
PROFILES
Readers who are new to the series will quickly catch up. Juicy neighborhood gossip and a good dose of humor build up to a...
In the second installment of the Medlar Mystery series, an author and her partners-in-solving-crime investigate the murder of an elderly woman in Lachlan, Florida.
“Today, living alone is considered to be an almost criminal act,” says Sara Medlar, author and amateur sleuth. Perhaps that’s why Janet Beeson was found dead in her home with a knife in her chest, poison dripping from her mouth, and a bullet in her head. Other than her best friend, Sylvia Alden, who killed herself two years ago, Janet had no close friends—and no real enemies. According to all the neighbors who admit they’ve taunted her, vandalized her property, and called her a witch over the years, Janet hadn’t done anything to deserve it. If anything, they’re surprised she’d never tried to murder any of them. Sara doesn’t want to get involved, but when Sheriff Daryl Flynn asks her to stop by the crime scene to take pictures, she can’t get Janet’s story out of her head. With the help of her niece, realtor Kate Medlar, and Jack Wyatt, the grandson of her old flame, Sara continues to poke her nose around town to find out why this supposedly sweet old lady’s life went sour. And she seems to find a new scandal around every corner. Meanwhile, Kate prods the neighbors for stories about her late father, and Jack’s crush on Kate remains unrequited.
Readers who are new to the series will quickly catch up. Juicy neighborhood gossip and a good dose of humor build up to a dramatic ending that’s equal parts wicked and fun.Pub Date: Feb. 26, 2019
ISBN: 978-0-7783-0829-4
Page Count: 336
Publisher: Harlequin MIRA
Review Posted Online: Nov. 13, 2018
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Dec. 1, 2018
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