Romance all but obliterates mystery here, with Michaels’s lens trained so tightly on the leads that she misses every chance...
Viscount Saint Just continues to play havoc with the life of his creator, Maggie Kelly (Maggie by the Book, 2003, etc.).
Now that he finally has a life—and an income—of his own, modeling for Fragrances by Pierre under the name Alex Blakely, Maggie’s Regency hero could take Sterling Balder, his valet, and slip off into the whirlwind of New York. Instead, he takes an apartment across the hall from the romance writer and tries to run her life, casting himself in the role of her protector, mentor and maybe even . . . He books passage for Maggie, Sterling and himself back to England, where he’s been only in Maggie’s books, to watch the filming of a St. Just telemovie in the creepy country manor Sir Rudolph Medwine has loaned the parsimonious production company. But just as a flood halts production, Maggie finds the body of obnoxious screenwriter Sam Undercuffler dangling outside her window. Was Sam killed by sluttish star Nikki Campion, dim leading man Troy Barlow, ex–porn director Arnaud Peppin, Medwine’s sneaky nephew, Byrd Stockwell or Uncle Willard, the manor’s ghost-in-residence? Maggie won’t rest until she knows, and St. Just can’t rest while Maggie’s sleuthing.
Romance all but obliterates mystery here, with Michaels’s lens trained so tightly on the leads that she misses every chance for fun with her bit players.Pub Date: Dec. 5, 2005
ISBN: 0-7582-0880-4
Page Count: 288
Publisher: Kensington
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Oct. 1, 2005
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
Compelling characters and a sexy, angst-filled bunch of mysteries add up to a winning series debut.
After ending the long-running Grim Reaper series (Summoned to Thirteenth Grave, 2019, etc.), Jones introduces a sexy, funny, tough new heroine in Sunshine Vicram, the police chief of Del Sol, New Mexico.
Sun fled her hometown years before after the horrifying experience of being kidnapped when she was 17—an experience she doesn’t talk about, though it’s never out of her mind. After becoming a police officer, she worked most recently only half an hour away in Santa Fe before her parents nominated her for chief without telling her. Now that she and her 14-year-old daughter, Auri, have settled into a cottage in her parents’ backyard, she lands a case that brings back all her worst fears and cracks open suppressed memories. Auri’s first day at school is blighted by mean girls and rumors that identify her as a police snitch. The best part of her day is meeting heart-stopping Cruz De los Santos, a talented poet who’s the coolest guy in school. Del Sol has a reputation as a place where weird things happen, but the toughest ordeal for Sun is seeing the man she’s loved forever. Levi Ravinder, owner of Dark River Shine distillery, is the successful member of a dysfunctional, crime-ridden family. At first he responds to her coolly, but the atmosphere between them is combustible. Then Marianna St. Aubin literally crashes into the police station to report the kidnapping of her daughter, Sybil. For years Sybil told her parents about dreams that she’d be taken and killed before her 15th birthday, but they never believed her. A desperate hunt for Sybil and Levi’s nephew, Jimmy, who has autism and is also missing, reveals the long-dead body of Levi’s uncle and the shack Sun suddenly realizes she was kept in after her abduction. Both Sun and Auri must fight to overcome the dangerous secrets that spring up from nowhere.
Compelling characters and a sexy, angst-filled bunch of mysteries add up to a winning series debut.Pub Date: April 7, 2020
ISBN: 978-1-250-14944-2
Page Count: 400
Publisher: St. Martin's
Review Posted Online: Jan. 26, 2020
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 15, 2020
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
Middling for this standout series but guaranteed to please anyone who thinks the cops sometimes get it wrong.
A cold case pulls Harry Bosch back from retirement and into another eventful partnership with Detective Renée Ballard of the LAPD.
The widow of Bosch’s retired mentor, Detective John Jack Thompson, has a present for Bosch, and it’s a doozy: the murder book for the unsolved killing of ex-con John Hilton, shot to death in his car one night nearly 20 years ago, which Thompson swiped from the archives without authorization or explanation. Bosch, who wonders why Thompson lifted the murder book if he didn’t intend to work the case, is eager to take a crack at it himself, but he needs the resources that only an active partner can provide. But Ballard, settled into the routine of the midnight shift after her exile from Robbery-Homicide (Dark Sacred Night, 2018), has just started working her own case, the arson that killed Eddie, a homeless man, inside his tent. As if that’s not enough criminal activity, Bosch’s half brother, Lincoln lawyer Mickey Haller, faces the apparently hopeless defense of Jeffrey Herstadt, who not only left his DNA under the fingernail of Walter Montgomery, the Superior Court judge he’s accused of killing, but also obligingly confessed to the murder. Working sometimes in tandem, more often separately, and sometimes actively against the cops who naturally bridle at the suggestion that any of their own theories or arrests might be flawed, Ballard and Bosch slog through the usual dead ends and fruitless rounds of questioning to link two murders separated by many years to a single hired killer. The most mysterious question of all—why did John Jack Thompson steal that murder book in the first place?—is answered suddenly, casually, and surprisingly.
Middling for this standout series but guaranteed to please anyone who thinks the cops sometimes get it wrong.Pub Date: Oct. 22, 2019
ISBN: 978-0-316-48561-6
Page Count: 416
Publisher: Little, Brown
Review Posted Online: Sept. 1, 2019
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 15, 2019
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