Strictly for readers who think “choosing a gift for a romantic partner was a puzzle fit for Sherlock Holmes.”
Murder strikes for a third time in Professor Phaedra Brighton’s otherwise impossibly cozy Virginia world.
Phae’s sister, Hannah, has labored so diligently to prepare for the opening of her patisserie, Tout de Sweet, that it’s doubly devastating when Det. Matteo Morelli of the Laurel Springs Police Department closes it down on opening day after its smashing success is smashed to bits by the poisoning of Anna Steele, the personal assistant to wealthy Rachel Brandon. Maybe it serves Anna right, since she swiped a dark chocolate cupcake Phae had earmarked for her father, attorney Malcolm Brighton, only to collapse moments after licking its fondant, which someone evidently spiked with cyanide during a false fire alarm that emptied Tout de Sweet. But it’s adding insult to fatality that she still can’t eclipse either her employer, the powerful heir of Brandon Advertising who’s promised to feature Hannah in her Home Channel magazine, or Hannah herself, who’s naturally accused of running the wrong kind of bakery (the accusers, led by rival baker Kate Brennan, don’t even call it a patisserie). Once Anna has breathed her last, there’s nothing left for the surviving characters to do but circulate rumors about each other, spot possible suspects in places they’re not supposed to be, react with horror every time an unsolicited gift of cupcakes or chocolates turns up, and grouse about their romances. The killer is more predictable than Edward Ferrars is in the role Austen gave him, and this time there aren’t even many echoes of Sense and Sensibility, though Phae’s Jane Austen Tea Society does meet to discuss it.
Strictly for readers who think “choosing a gift for a romantic partner was a puzzle fit for Sherlock Holmes.”Pub Date: Dec. 12, 2023
ISBN: 9780593337653
Page Count: 320
Publisher: Berkley
Review Posted Online: Sept. 9, 2023
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Oct. 15, 2023
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
As the prosecutor sadly observes: “All this because of a dead buffalo.”
Idyllic Catalina Island turns out to be just as crime infested as the rest of Los Angeles County in the latest series launch by the creator of Harry Bosch, Renée Ballard, and the Lincoln Lawyer.
Det. Sgt. Stilwell has been bounced off the county homicide squad and rusticized to Catalina, where the exclusive Black Marlin Club won’t admit even four-term Avalon Mayor Doug Allen to full membership and the most serious infraction seems to be the killing and cutting up of a buffalo, presumably by Henry Gaston, who operates Island Mystery Tours when he’s not threatening endangered species. All that changes with the discovery of a body sunk in the surrounding waters. The corpse, most recognizable by its streak of purple hair, is that of Leigh-Anne Moss, a Black Marlin server recently fired for fraternizing with members and guests she sees as potential sugar daddies. Stilwell is sufficiently invested in her murder to compete vigorously over jurisdiction with Rex Ahearn, the LA County homicide detective who kept his job when Stilwell lost his. Their rivalry, fueled by mutual contempt, is only the first hint that Stilwell will end up fighting his counterparts in law enforcement and local government at least as hard as he fights crooks like hit man Merris Spivak and Oscar “Baby Head” Terranova, Henry’s boss, who comes under sharper scrutiny when Henry disappears and ends up dead himself. Connelly handles his hero’s obligatory romance with assistant harbormaster Tash Dano and his increasingly wary alliance with assistant D.A. Monika Juarez with equal professionalism, and if the wrap-up leaves some loose ends dangling, well, that’s what franchises are for.
As the prosecutor sadly observes: “All this because of a dead buffalo.”Pub Date: May 20, 2025
ISBN: 9780316588485
Page Count: 352
Publisher: Little, Brown
Review Posted Online: April 19, 2025
Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 15, 2025
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
© Copyright 2025 Kirkus Media LLC. All Rights Reserved.
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