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THE QUEENE’S CURE

Harper makes clever use of historical data—the thematic possibilities of a disturbing wax doll, disease, and the martyred...

Chastened by the near-loss of her throne after the Amy Robsart–Robin Dudley scandal in 1561, Elizabeth Tudor turns her attention away from the desires of her body and focuses on its health and that of the body politic. As pox and plots erupt all around—all too close when barriers are breached by a pox-marked effigy that lands in her carriage and a pox-marked body in her walled garden—she finds herself terrified, beset, and more solitary than ever. She keeps former heartthrob Dudley at arm’s length after the notoriety of his wife’s death and exiles or imprisons royal Greys and Stewarts for plots against her. In the face of disease, Elizabeth needs her trusted herbalist Meg Milligrew (The Tidal Poole, 2000, etc.), earlier sent from court for hiding secrets about her past life. She certainly doesn’t trust physicians from the Royal College. Drs. Peter Pascal and John Caius are not only hair-shirt–wearing papists, they ignore their duties in favor of abusing apothecaries like Meg and shunning progressive Dr. Marcus Clerewell for his infectious–water-droplet theory of pestilence. All these players abuse their powers, and each other, until the sleuthing Elizabeth lands in a sick bed and readers sort out a medieval melodrama.

Harper makes clever use of historical data—the thematic possibilities of a disturbing wax doll, disease, and the martyred Sir Thomas More—but buries a promising medical/political mystery beneath mad villainy; an inviting puzzle beneath too many lost voices, children, and wives; and engaging characters beneath queenly ranting and a too-obvious red herring.

Pub Date: April 2, 2002

ISBN: 0-385-33478-8

Page Count: 304

Publisher: Delacorte

Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010

Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 1, 2002

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BADLANDS

A suspenseful, professional-grade north country procedural whose heroine, a deft mix of compassion and attitude, would be...

Box takes another break from his highly successful Joe Pickett series (Stone Cold, 2014, etc.) for a stand-alone about a police detective, a developmentally delayed boy, and a package everyone in North Dakota wants to grab.

Cassandra Dewell can’t leave Montana’s Lewis and Clark County fast enough for her new job as chief investigator for Jon Kirkbride, sheriff of Bakken County. She leaves behind no memories worth keeping: her husband is dead, her boss has made no bones about disliking her, and she’s looking forward to new responsibilities and the higher salary underwritten by North Dakota’s sudden oil boom. But Bakken County has its own issues. For one thing, it’s cold—a whole lot colder than the coldest weather Cassie’s ever imagined. For another, the job she turns out to have been hired for—leading an investigation her new boss doesn’t feel he can entrust to his own force—makes her queasy. The biggest problem, though, is one she doesn’t know about until it slaps her in the face. A fatal car accident that was anything but accidental has jarred loose a stash of methamphetamines and cash that’s become the center of a battle between the Sons of Freedom, Bakken County’s traditional drug sellers, and MS-13, the Salvadorian upstarts who are muscling in on their territory. It’s a setup that leaves scant room for law enforcement officers or for Kyle Westergaard, the 12-year-old paperboy damaged since birth by fetal alcohol syndrome, who’s walked away from the wreck with a prize all too many people would kill for.

A suspenseful, professional-grade north country procedural whose heroine, a deft mix of compassion and attitude, would be welcome to return and tie up the gaping loose end Box leaves. The unrelenting cold makes this the perfect beach read.

Pub Date: July 28, 2015

ISBN: 978-0-312-58321-7

Page Count: 272

Publisher: Minotaur

Review Posted Online: April 21, 2015

Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 15, 2015

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THE A LIST

Proficient but eminently predictable. Amid all the time shifts and embedded backstories, the most surprising feature is how...

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A convicted killer’s list of five people he wants dead runs the gamut from the wife he’s already had murdered to franchise heroine Ali Reynolds.

Back in the day, women came from all over to consult Santa Clarita fertility specialist Dr. Edward Gilchrist. Many of them left his care happily pregnant, never dreaming that the father of the babies they carried was none other than the physician himself, who donated his own sperm rather than that of the handsome, athletic, disease-free men pictured in his scrapbook. When Alexandra Munsey’s son, Evan, is laid low by the kidney disease he’s inherited from his biological father and she returns to Gilchrist in search of the donor’s medical records, the roof begins to fall in on him. By the time it’s done falling, he’s serving a life sentence in Folsom Prison for commissioning the death of his wife, Dawn, the former nurse and sometime egg donor who’d turned on him. With nothing left to lose, Gilchrist tattoos himself with the initials of five people he blames for his fall: Dawn; Leo Manuel Aurelio, the hit man he’d hired to dispose of her; Kaitlyn Todd, the nurse/receptionist who took Dawn’s place; Alex Munsey, whose search for records upset his apple cart; and Ali Reynolds, the TV reporter who’d helped put Alex in touch with the dozen other women who formed the Progeny Project because their children looked just like hers. No matter that Ali’s been out of both California and the news business for years; Gilchrist and his enablers know that revenge can’t possibly be served too cold. Wonder how far down that list they’ll get before Ali, aided once more by Frigg, the methodical but loose-cannon AI first introduced in Duel to the Death (2018), turns on them?

Proficient but eminently predictable. Amid all the time shifts and embedded backstories, the most surprising feature is how little the boundary-challenged AI, who gets into the case more or less inadvertently, differs from your standard human sidekick with issues.

Pub Date: April 2, 2019

ISBN: 978-1-5011-5101-9

Page Count: 352

Publisher: Gallery Books/Simon & Schuster

Review Posted Online: Feb. 18, 2019

Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 1, 2019

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