Fans of golden age puzzles will wish this one could go on forever.
Physics professor Manabu Yukawa’s fourth round of criminal investigation leads from a discovery of corpses old and new to a series of mind-boggling theories about their connection.
Three years after gifted singer Saori Namiki disappeared from the Tokyo suburb of Kikuno, her parents, Yutaro and Machiko Namiki, must face the news that her body has been found. The circumstances of the discovery are even more disquieting: Saori’s corpse has turned up in the charred skeleton of the house of Yoshie Hasunuma, along with that of the homeowner. Director Mamiya, the head of the Tokyo Metropolitan Police Department’s Homicide Division, instantly senses that he’s in deeper waters because Yoshie’s son, Kanichi Hasunuma, was the leading suspect in the murder of Yuna Motohashi, a schoolgirl whose dismembered remains were discovered in the nearby mountains 23 years ago. Shortly after Hasunuma, who maintains a surly silence when the police question him, puts in an appearance at Namiki-ya, the restaurant the Namikis own, to blame them for the way the police have been pressing him and demand recompense for his inconvenience, he’s smothered to death during the town’s annual civic parade, and most readers will breathe a sigh of relief. Not Chief Inspector Kusanagi’s old friend Detective Galileo, as Yukawa is nicknamed. In a rousing triumph of the scientific method, the supersleuth, insisting, “I’m just a regular physicist,” spins out a series of increasingly intricate hypotheses about this latest murder, tweaking each one when he’s confronted with contrary evidence, then generating newly refined and revised theories that are even more impressive in their ability to cover the sprawling network of new data.
Fans of golden age puzzles will wish this one could go on forever.Pub Date: Dec. 14, 2021
ISBN: 978-1-2506-2481-9
Page Count: 352
Publisher: Minotaur
Review Posted Online: Aug. 31, 2021
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 15, 2021
A suspenseful, professional-grade north country procedural whose heroine, a deft mix of compassion and attitude, would be...
Box takes another break from his highly successful Joe Pickett series (Stone Cold, 2014, etc.) for a stand-alone about a police detective, a developmentally delayed boy, and a package everyone in North Dakota wants to grab.
Cassandra Dewell can’t leave Montana’s Lewis and Clark County fast enough for her new job as chief investigator for Jon Kirkbride, sheriff of Bakken County. She leaves behind no memories worth keeping: her husband is dead, her boss has made no bones about disliking her, and she’s looking forward to new responsibilities and the higher salary underwritten by North Dakota’s sudden oil boom. But Bakken County has its own issues. For one thing, it’s cold—a whole lot colder than the coldest weather Cassie’s ever imagined. For another, the job she turns out to have been hired for—leading an investigation her new boss doesn’t feel he can entrust to his own force—makes her queasy. The biggest problem, though, is one she doesn’t know about until it slaps her in the face. A fatal car accident that was anything but accidental has jarred loose a stash of methamphetamines and cash that’s become the center of a battle between the Sons of Freedom, Bakken County’s traditional drug sellers, and MS-13, the Salvadorian upstarts who are muscling in on their territory. It’s a setup that leaves scant room for law enforcement officers or for Kyle Westergaard, the 12-year-old paperboy damaged since birth by fetal alcohol syndrome, who’s walked away from the wreck with a prize all too many people would kill for.
A suspenseful, professional-grade north country procedural whose heroine, a deft mix of compassion and attitude, would be welcome to return and tie up the gaping loose end Box leaves. The unrelenting cold makes this the perfect beach read.Pub Date: July 28, 2015
ISBN: 978-0-312-58321-7
Page Count: 272
Publisher: Minotaur
Review Posted Online: April 21, 2015
Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 15, 2015
It's hard to read but hard to look away from.
When two women who share a birthday meet, a journalist becomes the subject of her own true-crime mystery.
On their 45th birthdays, Josie Fair and Alix Summer meet at a pub and discover they were born not only on the same day, but in the same hospital. Alix is a successful journalist, and Josie convinces Alix that her story is worth telling: Josie met her husband when she was 13 and he was 40. “I can see that maybe I was being used, that maybe I was even being groomed?” she confesses to Alix. “But that feeling of being powerful, right at the start, when I was still in control. I miss that sometimes. I really do. And what I’d like, more than anything, is to get it back.” From this premise Alix creates a Netflix series, Hi! I’m Your Birthday Twin! which investigates Josie’s life as she reconciles what happened to her as a teen and seeks a new path. With the story unfinished, the narrative unfolds in the present tense, with prose that jingles like song lyrics: “He turns to see if the girl is behind him, and sees her wishy-washy, wavy-wavy, in double vision through the glass windows of the hotel.” Alix is both intrigued and repulsed by Josie, but she initially gives her the benefit of the doubt. After all, Alix’s husband, Nathan, has a drinking problem, and Alix knows what it’s like to be reluctant to leave a bad situation. But Josie seems more interested in being part of Alix’s seemingly glamorous life than she is in fixing her own, and when three people end up dead and Alix’s life is turned upside down, the evidence points to Josie—and turns the TV series into a murder mystery. Transcripts from Alix’s interviews alternate with the narrative, offering increasingly varied perspectives on Josie’s story as told by her neighbors, friends, and family members. With so many versions of events, the ending shatters, leaving readers to decide whose is the truth.
It's hard to read but hard to look away from.Pub Date: Aug. 8, 2023
ISBN: 9781982179007
Page Count: 384
Publisher: Atria
Review Posted Online: May 24, 2023
Kirkus Reviews Issue: June 15, 2023
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