Follows the formula, but the formula’s still fun!
Dallas police detective Betty Rhyzyk is back, more determined than ever to end her nemesis Evangeline Roy’s drug empire.
Betty and her wife, Jackie, are getting used to a new routine, as Mary Grace, the girl they rescued from the streets, and her baby, Elizabeth, have been living with them for seven months. Betty’s daily runs now include a jogging stroller—which is more change than she would like, if she’s honest with herself. Then Mary Grace disappears and her stepfather contacts Betty, looking to take custody of Elizabeth. Work offers little relief from domestic stress; recently promoted to detective sergeant, Betty is informed by Sinaloa cartel enforcer El Cuchillo that her old enemy Evangeline Roy has brought her drug empire back to Texas. Roy—cult leader, drug kingpin, and psychopath—had previously imprisoned Betty, and the resulting rescue mission led to the deaths of Roy's sons. Now she’s gunning for Betty and intends to have some fun while destroying her, setting her people loose in Dallas dressed in red wigs. El Cuchillo needs help getting rid of the competition and gives Betty an ultimatum: “Capture or kill” Roy in two weeks or he will make her life a living hell. Caught in the maelstrom between these two homicidal villains, Betty must rely on her partner, Seth Dutton, as well as Peg Bartles and Rocky Bentner, an eccentric pair of private investigators, to find Mary Grace and protect Elizabeth, to discover the whereabouts of Evangeline Roy, and to prevent El Cuchillo from following through on his threats. She also gets some unexpected help from her Uncle Benny; his voice in Betty’s head offers her solace and guidance as several flashbacks reveal more about Betty’s past relationships with her parents, her brother, and her uncle. Strong women, sharp dialogue, and a vulnerable, kick-ass heroine combine for another satisfying adventure.
Follows the formula, but the formula’s still fun!Pub Date: Nov. 2, 2021
ISBN: 978-0-31628-045-7
Page Count: 400
Publisher: Mulholland Books/Little, Brown
Review Posted Online: Aug. 17, 2021
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 1, 2021
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
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
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