Reichs (Flash and Bones, 2011, etc.) delivers solid, albeit grueling, post-mortem work, nonstop complications and enough...
A grisly discovery at the home of a suspected baby-killer leads forensic anthropologist Temperance Brennan and the Sûreté du Québec on a wild chase to the depths of far-off Edmonton and environs.
Complaining of vaginal bleeding, Amy Roberts gives every sign of having recently borne a child. So when she disappears from the Hôpital Honoré-Mercier, the law naturally goes after her. They don’t find Amy, but they do find a slew of interchangeable false names and something much more horrible: three dead infants, one recently deceased, the others not so recently. The investigation would be ticklish even if it didn’t bring Tempe together with her long-ago fling Sgt. Oliver Isaac Hasty, who’s convinced against all the evidence that she wants to get back together, and Lt. Andrew Ryan, her much more recent and serious lover. The ill-matched trio follows the trail of Annaliese Ruben, if that’s indeed her real name, to Edmonton, where a fellow prostitute reported her missing four months after she quit working the streets. There the case takes an abrupt turn from personal vice to grand-scale economic malfeasance with the news that Ruben’s late father, Farley McLeod, had been involved in a quest for diamonds that pitted McLeod’s unexpectedly numerous brood of survivors against environmental activists like Friends of the Tundra’s Horace Tyne, with the DeBeers organization hovering barely offstage. Nor are the opportunities for forensic surprises at an end.
Reichs (Flash and Bones, 2011, etc.) delivers solid, albeit grueling, post-mortem work, nonstop complications and enough action for a weekend at the bijou. Even if you can’t keep track of all the suspects, you’ll be deeply relieved when she brings down the curtain.Pub Date: Aug. 28, 2012
ISBN: 978-1-4391-0243-5
Page Count: 304
Publisher: Scribner
Review Posted Online: July 21, 2012
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 15, 2012
This ran in the S.E.P. and resulted in more demands for the story in book form than ever recorded. Well, here it is and it is a honey. Imagine ten people, not knowing each other, not knowing why they were invited on a certain island house-party, not knowing their hosts. Then imagine them dead, one by one, until none remained alive, nor any clue to the murderer. Grand suspense, a unique trick, expertly handled.
Pub Date: Feb. 21, 1939
ISBN: 0062073478
Page Count: 272
Publisher: Dodd, Mead
Review Posted Online: Sept. 20, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 1, 1939
SEEN & HEARD
More of a western than a mystery, like most of Joe’s adventures, and all the better for the open physical clashes that...
Wyoming Game and Fish Warden Joe Pickett (Free Fire, 2007, etc.), once again at the governor’s behest, stalks the wraithlike figure who’s targeting elk hunters for death.
Frank Urman was taken down by a single rifle shot, field-dressed, beheaded and hung upside-down to bleed out. (You won’t believe where his head eventually turns up.) The poker chip found near his body confirms that he’s the third victim of the Wolverine, a killer whose animus against hunters is evidently being whipped up by anti-hunting activist Klamath Moore. The potential effects on the state’s hunting revenues are so calamitous that Governor Spencer Rulon pulls out all the stops, and Pickett is forced to work directly with Wyoming Game and Fish Director Randy Pope, the boss who fired him from his regular job in Saddlestring District. Three more victims will die in rapid succession before Joe is given a more congenial colleague: Nate Romanowski, the outlaw falconer who pledged to protect Joe’s family before he was taken into federal custody. As usual in this acclaimed series, the mystery is slight and its solution eminently guessable long before it’s confirmed by testimony from an unlikely source. But the people and scenes and enduring conflicts that lead up to that solution will stick with you for a long time.
More of a western than a mystery, like most of Joe’s adventures, and all the better for the open physical clashes that periodically release the tension between the scheming adversaries.Pub Date: May 20, 2008
ISBN: 978-0-399-15488-1
Page Count: 320
Publisher: Putnam
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 15, 2008
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