Not the best month for country-music sensation Dakota Jones: Somebody's been sending her threatening letters and unsolicited subscriptions to Seventeen and Prison Life; somebody's upstaged her Memphis concert with a flash grenade; somebody's killed singer Joni Ames, leaving a note on the body, ``NOW WE'RE EVEN, DAKOTA.'' (Still on the horizon: a dropped spotlight that nearly crushes Dakota, and a batch of cookies like mama never made.) And that's not all: The day after the murder, both Dakota's long-lost cousin Hope Delaney and the father who abandoned her as a baby turn up on her doorstep and want into Dakota's mÇnage. Luckily, Sacramento p.i. Kat Colorado, an old friend of Dakota's whose shingle ought to read ``MENACED INNOCENTS OUR SPECIALTY,'' is on the job, spiriting her off to hiding, taking a jaundiced look at her poor relations, and pointing the finger by turns at Dakota's abusive ex, her double-talking manager, and the lover who's two- timing her with sloe-eyed little Hope. From early on, Kat and Dakota are both so maddeningly sententious—``You help people rewrite their lives, Katy,'' Dakota tells Kat, who weighs in with gems like ``Truth is rarely easy, I think. And almost always a double-edged sword''—that you just want to shake them; but once the omnithreatening characters take over, the story takes off. So Kat's seventh is better than her recent cases (Alley Kat Blues, 1995, etc.), though still not up to 1992's Copy Kat. (Mystery Guild alternate selection; author tour)
Pub Date: June 4, 1996
ISBN: 0-399-14133-2
Page Count: 336
Publisher: Putnam
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: April 15, 1996
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
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
Joe’s fifth case is his best balanced, most deeply felt and most mystifying to date: an absolute must.
Crime-fighting Wyoming game warden Joe Pickett outdoes himself during a temporary transfer from sleepy Saddlestring to fashionable Jackson Hole.
Will Jensen, the Jackson game warden, was a great guy and a model warden, but once his wife left him six months ago, he spiraled into madness and suicide, and now Joe’s been called to replace him. The transition is anything but smooth. There’s no question of Joe’s family coming with him, so he’s reduced to hoping he can get a signal for the cell-phone calls he squeezes into his busy schedule. En route to his new posting, Joe has to pursue a marauding grizzly. He arrives to meet a formidable series of challenges. Cantankerous outfitter Smoke Van Horn wants to go on attracting elk with illegal salt licks without the new warden’s interference. Animal Liberation Network activist Pi Stevenson wants him to publicize her cause and adopt a vegan diet. Developer Don Ennis wants to open a housing development for millionaires who like their meat free of additives. Ennis’s trophy wife Stella simply wants Joe—and he wants her back. As he wrestles with these demands, and with a supervisor riled over Joe’s track record of destroying government property in pursuit of bad guys (Trophy Hunt, 2004, etc.), Joe slowly becomes convinced that Will did not kill himself.
Joe’s fifth case is his best balanced, most deeply felt and most mystifying to date: an absolute must.Pub Date: May 5, 2005
ISBN: 0-399-15291-1
Page Count: 320
Publisher: Putnam
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: April 1, 2005
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