A classic English-style mystery with a perky heroine reminiscent of Georgette Heyer’s clever sleuths, packed with detail and...
A best-seller when it was first published in 1948 in Australia: A telephone operator turns sleuth when a colleague is murdered.
Maggie Byrnes and her co-workers are not really surprised when someone bashes in Sarah Compton’s head with a piece of equipment known as a buttinsky, because Sarah, widely disliked for her nosy, interfering ways, was something of a buttinsky herself. But it’s still nerve-wracking to know that a murderer is loose in the telephone exchange. The exchange, a hive of activity, quiets down a bit during the night, when the mostly female staff has more time for gossip, jealousy and backbiting. Maggie thinks the police would be very interested in her inside knowledge should she ever decide to share it with them. She and her best friend, Mac, are both romantically interested in supervisor John “Clark” Clarkson. So Maggie’s not sure whether it’s jealousy or Mac’s desire to beat her to the mystery’s solution that suddenly turns their friendship cold. Though Maggie gets surprising latitude from DI Coleman and DS Matheson of the Melbourne police, they both warn her of the dangers of hiding information. Maggie’s sleuthing turns up a great deal of information that people would prefer remain hidden. When a co-worker commits suicide, Maggie feels guilty but can’t give up the hunt. When Mac becomes the next victim, however, Maggie is devastated, especially since what she knows adds her to the killer’s list.
A classic English-style mystery with a perky heroine reminiscent of Georgette Heyer’s clever sleuths, packed with detail and menace.Pub Date: June 10, 2014
ISBN: 978-1-891241-37-6
Page Count: 331
Publisher: Dark Passage
Review Posted Online: March 19, 2014
Kirkus Reviews Issue: April 1, 2014
Proceed at your own risk.
Pioneering pathologist Kay Scarpetta (Trace, 2004, etc.) goes up against a wraithlike killer whose self-appointed mission is to “relieve others of their suffering.”
Practice, practice, practice. If only 16-year-old South Carolina tennis phenom Drew Martin had stuck to the court instead of going off to Rome to party, her tortured corpse wouldn’t be baffling the Italian authorities, headed inexplicably by medico legale Capt. Ottorino Poma, and the International Investigative Response team, which includes both Scarpetta and her lover, forensic psychologist Benton Wesley. But the young woman’s murder and the gruesome forensic riddles it poses are something of a sideshow to the main event: the obligatory maundering of the continuing cast. Wesley still won’t leave Boston for the woman he tepidly insists he loves. Scarpetta’s niece, computer whiz Lucy Farinelli, continues to be jealously protective of her aunt. Scarpetta’s investigator, Pete Marino, is so besotted by the trailer-trash pickup who’s pushing his buttons that he does some terrible things. And Scarpetta herself is threatened by every misfit in the known universe, from a disgruntled mortician to oracular TV shrink Marilyn Self. Cornwell’s trademark forensics have long since been matched by Karin Slaughter and CSI. What’s most distinctive about this venerable franchise is the kitchen-sink plotting; the soap-opera melodrama that prevents any given volume from coming to a satisfying end; and the emphasis on titanic battles between Scarpetta and a series of Antichrists.
Proceed at your own risk.Pub Date: Oct. 23, 2007
ISBN: 978-0-399-15393-8
Page Count: 416
Publisher: Putnam
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 1, 2007
BOOK TO SCREEN
A run-of-the-mill mystery that includes some welcome tips on the health benefits of chocolate.
An accountant and her lawyer husband must revisit his high school days in order to solve a murder.
Lee Woodyard is no fan of the scheme her husband, Joe, and her uncle, Hogan Jones, the local police chief, hatch to buy the Bailey house next door and flip it. But even though she’d rather be at her job as business manager at her aunt’s chocolate specialty shop (The Chocolate Bunny Brouhaha, 2016, etc.), she agrees to meet with the plumber for an estimate—a meeting that turns dangerous when plumber Digger Brown finds a bundle of rags in the cellar. When he drops them, a gun hidden in the bundle goes off, sending a bullet whizzing past Lee. No one seems to know where the old fashioned six-shooter came from, but the accident recalls a past incident in which the Sharks, a group of high school boys that included Brad Davis, Chip Brown, Sharpy Brock, Tad Bailey, and Spud Dirk, pulled a prank that could have been deadly. Years ago, when several Sharks pretended as a joke to rob a convenience store in which Brad was working, Brad pulled a real gun and fired but hit nothing more vital than the Frozen Rainbow Machine. Now Brad’s the president of the VanHorn–Davis Foundation, whose charitable donations underwrite many improvements to the Michigan lakeside town of Warner Pier. When Lee accompanies Hogan to the Bailey house to show him where the gun was, they find more than they bargained for—Spud’s corpse in a cupboard. Although Hogan’s the police chief, he must stay out of the investigation because Spud had been competing with him to buy the Bailey house. So Lee, who’d prefer to stick to chocolates, is forced to join Joe in detective work.
A run-of-the-mill mystery that includes some welcome tips on the health benefits of chocolate.Pub Date: Nov. 5, 2019
ISBN: 978-0-593-10000-4
Page Count: 256
Publisher: Berkley
Review Posted Online: Aug. 18, 2019
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 1, 2019
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