Like touching a live wire that continues across three generations.
Forty years after the unsolved murder of a Delaware teen, a newly minted U.S. marshal on an apparently unrelated assignment is pulled back into the case.
Emily Vaughn is well and truly cast out. Discovering that she’s pregnant even though she has no recollection of having had sex with anyone, she refuses to follow the edict of her censorious parents to name the father and force him into marriage. In return, they turn on her with a grim intensity only Slaughter could summon. But Emily doesn’t do cast-out. Even after she’s expelled from her school, she shows up at the senior prom in full regalia and is shunned and shamed by virtually everyone who sees her before she’s brutally struck down by a shadowy figure. Decades after her death, newly anointed Marshal Andrea Oliver, who knows more than a little about domestic problems—her biological father is doing time for his misdeeds as a psychopathic cult leader—is assigned as part of her initial rotation to protect Judge Esther Rose Vaughn, who’s received a series of florid death threats punctuated by a dead rat. Starchy Esther, it turns out, was Emily’s mother, and Andrea’s gig will bring her uncomfortably close to both Esther and Judith Vaughn, the daughter doctors managed to keep Emily alive long enough to bring to birth 40 years ago. Slaughter is less interested in revealing whodunit than in showcasing the many ways Emily was rejected by her peers, her teacher, and her family and the bitter legacy her supposed transgression left behind, and she brings her trademark intensity to every relationship she lays bare.
Like touching a live wire that continues across three generations.Pub Date: Aug. 23, 2022
ISBN: 978-0-06-285811-5
Page Count: 400
Publisher: Morrow/HarperCollins
Review Posted Online: July 12, 2022
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 1, 2022
A top-class cozy infused with dry wit and charming characters who draw you in and leave you wanting more, please.
Four residents of Coopers Chase, a British retirement village, compete with the police to solve a murder in this debut novel.
The Thursday Murder Club started out with a group of septuagenarians working on old murder cases culled from the files of club founder Elizabeth Best’s friend Penny Gray, a former police officer who's now comatose in the village's nursing home. Elizabeth used to have an unspecified job, possibly as a spy, that has left her with a large network of helpful sources. Joyce Meadowcroft is a former nurse who chronicles their deeds. Psychiatrist Ibrahim Arif and well-known political firebrand Ron Ritchie complete the group. They charm Police Constable Donna De Freitas, who, visiting to give a talk on safety at Coopers Chase, finds the residents sharp as tacks. Built with drug money on the grounds of a convent, Coopers Chase is a high-end development conceived by loathsome Ian Ventham and maintained by dangerous crook Tony Curran, who’s about to be fired and replaced with wary but willing Bogdan Jankowski. Ventham has big plans for the future—as soon as he’s removed the nuns' bodies from the cemetery. When Curran is murdered, DCI Chris Hudson gets the case, but Elizabeth uses her influence to get the ambitious De Freitas included, giving the Thursday Club a police source. What follows is a fascinating primer in detection as British TV personality Osman allows the members to use their diverse skills to solve a series of interconnected crimes.
A top-class cozy infused with dry wit and charming characters who draw you in and leave you wanting more, please.Pub Date: Sept. 22, 2020
ISBN: 978-1-98-488096-3
Page Count: 368
Publisher: Pamela Dorman/Viking
Review Posted Online: June 30, 2020
Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 15, 2020
A fun read. Terrorists make great Clancy fodder.
Evildoers plan attacks from America to India, and Jack Ryan Jr. is a prime target.
In Washington state, a man and his family are murdered, and President Jack Ryan learns it is another Poseidon Spear incident. Three retired members of that counterterrorism group have been killed now, and the U.S. government suspects a mole in its midst. Meanwhile, the Umayyad Revolutionary Council believes it has a holy and wholly anti-American mission. Against this backdrop, Jack Ryan Jr., and his fiancée, Lisanne Robertson, visit Delhi, India, to attend the wedding of Srini Rai, the brilliant surgeon who attached Lisanne’s prosthetic left arm. Lisanne had lost her arm in Tom Clancy Shadow of the Dragon (2020). Jack and Lisanne are both operators working for the Campus, a covert group that executes secret presidential directives. A wedding is a happy occasion, and the engaged American couple intend the trip as a vacation. Jack and Lisanne will attend a sangeet, an elaborate pre-wedding party. But it isn’t long before they survive a suicide bomb attack. As with all Clancy novels, there’s plenty of action on a global scale. In simultaneous strikes, terrorists plan to contaminate America’s Western water supply with radioactive waste from Washington’s Hanford nuclear power plant, blow up a spectacular new bridge in Kashmir, and kill the evil Ryan—or Junior, at least. It will be At-Takwir, the end of days. There is an appealing mix of Indian culture, high-speed action, and the rich lode of details that characterizes the whole series. And in the background lingers the question on several characters’ minds: Have Jack and Lisanne set their own wedding date?
A fun read. Terrorists make great Clancy fodder.Pub Date: Sept. 2, 2025
ISBN: 9780593718032
Page Count: 448
Publisher: Putnam
Review Posted Online: Aug. 16, 2025
Kirkus Reviews Issue: tomorrow
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