The answers to these questions, though certainly disturbing, are so obvious that most readers will see them coming from far...
A familiar damsel-in-distress story veers off script into territory that would be too dark for almost anyone but Fossum (Hell Fire, 2016, etc.).
Kirkelina shop clerk Ragna Riegel was born to be hurt. An only child whose parents died years ago, she was too unattractive even as a teenager to appeal to most men, and her seduction by much older photographer Walther Eriksson, long since departed for Stockholm, left her on her own to raise a son, Rikard Josef, who took off for Berlin as soon as he possibly could. Over the years, Ragna has comforted herself by fantasizing about her son’s professional success as chief manager at the upscale hotel Dormero as she’s waited for the annual Christmas cards that are her only other link to his present-day life. In the meantime, a botched operation on her throat reduced her voice to a whisper, alienating her from the world even further. An even nastier chapter in her sad life opens with an anonymous letter that warns her: “YOU ARE GOING TO DIE.” Ragna disposes of the letter as briskly as if that disposed of the problem, but others soon follow: “IT’S NOT LONG NOW,” “I’M WATCHING YOU,” “NO ONE WILL HEAR YOU.” A series of intercut chapters shows Ragna, whose frantic calls to the police have been deflected by anodyne responses, conversing with series regular Inspector Konrad Sejer, who finally offers her sympathy and understanding. It gradually becomes clear, however, that Sejer regards Ragna not as the potential victim of a crime but as a criminal herself. But not much else is clear at all. What can this gentle, frightened woman have done to break the law, and what on Earth could have led her to do so?
The answers to these questions, though certainly disturbing, are so obvious that most readers will see them coming from far off, turning this mystery into an extended exercise in dramatic irony. The moving, late-blooming relationship between mother and son adds a welcome note of grace.Pub Date: Aug. 6, 2019
ISBN: 978-1-328-61419-3
Page Count: 336
Publisher: Houghton Mifflin Harcourt
Review Posted Online: May 12, 2019
Kirkus Reviews Issue: June 1, 2019
Forget about solving all these crimes; the signal triumph here is (spoiler) the heroine’s survival.
Another sweltering month in Charlotte, another boatload of mysteries past and present for overworked, overstressed forensic anthropologist Temperance Brennan.
A week after the night she chases but fails to catch a mysterious trespasser outside her town house, some unknown party texts Tempe four images of a corpse that looks as if it’s been chewed by wild hogs, because it has been. Showboat Medical Examiner Margot Heavner makes it clear that, breaking with her department’s earlier practice (The Bone Collection, 2016, etc.), she has no intention of calling in Tempe as a consultant and promptly identifies the faceless body herself as that of a young Asian man. Nettled by several errors in Heavner’s analysis, and even more by her willingness to share the gory details at a press conference, Tempe launches her own investigation, which is not so much off the books as against the books. Heavner isn’t exactly mollified when Tempe, aided by retired police detective Skinny Slidell and a host of experts, puts a name to the dead man. But the hints of other crimes Tempe’s identification uncovers, particularly crimes against children, spur her on to redouble her efforts despite the new M.E.’s splenetic outbursts. Before he died, it seems, Felix Vodyanov was linked to a passenger ferry that sank in 1994, an even earlier U.S. government project to research biological agents that could control human behavior, the hinky spiritual retreat Sparkling Waters, the dark web site DeepUnder, and the disappearances of at least four schoolchildren, two of whom have also turned up dead. And why on earth was Vodyanov carrying Tempe’s own contact information? The mounting evidence of ever more and ever worse skulduggery will pull Tempe deeper and deeper down what even she sees as a rabbit hole before she confronts a ringleader implicated in “Drugs. Fraud. Breaking and entering. Arson. Kidnapping. How does attempted murder sound?”
Forget about solving all these crimes; the signal triumph here is (spoiler) the heroine’s survival.Pub Date: March 17, 2020
ISBN: 978-1-9821-3888-2
Page Count: 352
Publisher: Scribner
Review Posted Online: Dec. 22, 2019
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 15, 2020
A smoothly written contemporary caper paired with a murder mystery and a little meet-the-Jetsons futurism. No one does...
Written under her real name and her pseudonym, two books in one from megaselling Roberts/Robb.
Book one: Laine Tavish, gorgeous redhead and owner of a small-town antique store, isn’t about to tell the cops that she knew the old man who was hit by a car right outside her shop. Just before he took his dying breath, she recognized Willy Young, partner in crime to Big Jack O’Hara, her father. Their biggest heist: millions of dollars in hot diamonds. Her father went to prison, but not Willy, whose last words were “left it for you.” What did he leave—and where? Enter Max Gannon, insurance investigator and all-around stud, with thick, wavy, run-your-fingers-through-it hair, tawny eyes that remind Laine of a tiger, and a delicious Georgia drawl. He beds Laine pronto, and they solve the case. But some of the diamonds are still missing. . . . Book two: it’s 50 years later, and New York traffic is slower than ever: just try getting a helicab on a rainy day. But Samantha Gannon, author of a bestseller called Hot Rocks based on her grandparents’ experiences in the long-ago case, eventually makes it home from the airport to find her house-sitter Andrea dead, throat cut. Another investigation begins, spearheaded by Eve Dallas, a tough-talking but very appealing New York cop married to Roarke, a rich, eccentric genius who just barely manages to stay on the right side of the law. Is the murderer after the rest of the diamonds? And is he or she related to the master thief who betrayed Samantha’s great-grandfather? There are more burning questions, and Eve wants answers—but, first, get Central on the telelink and program the Autochef for pastrami on rye.
A smoothly written contemporary caper paired with a murder mystery and a little meet-the-Jetsons futurism. No one does Suspense Lite better than Nora.Pub Date: Sept. 1, 2003
ISBN: 0-399-15106-0
Page Count: 448
Publisher: Putnam
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 15, 2003
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