Despite the title, this is absolutely a game from the first word to the last.
A testy Mackinac Island grandmother invites her granddaughter to a charity event that turns into a “pajama party from hell,” one that will test both of their very different skill sets to the limit.
Mimi MacLaine would love to see more of downstater Addie Paget, orphaned at 21 and then dumped by her fiancé, Brian Perry, who took all the credit for developing their wildly popular video game, Murderscape, and sold his company to Microsoft for big bucks that went to him alone. So why, Mimi asks, doesn’t Addie join her at a party thrown by her neighbor Jane Ireland, a wealthy widow who’s recently started an affair with her own son-in-law, Matthew Reed, who’s married to Jane’s outraged daughter, Alexandra? Jane’s invitation to celebrate with her “son-in-lover” might sound less tempting if Mimi told Addie that Jane is blackmailing her into coming and bidding top dollar on one of the items she’s auctioning off, so she doesn’t mention that. To the surprise of everyone but the reader, Jane is stabbed to death just as a historic snowstorm hits Mackinac, shutting down communications, preventing anyone from lowering the literal drawbridge over Jane’s moat, keeping the authorities from entering the place, and trapping the guests—most of whom are evidently being blackmailed as well—in their palatial digs until the “snowmageddon” abates. The upside is that Mimi and Addie have plenty of time to pool their resources, question the boilerplate suspects, one-up each other’s brightly witty remarks, puzzle over a truly ingenious series of clues, and solve the murder. Oops, make that murders.
Despite the title, this is absolutely a game from the first word to the last.Pub Date: April 8, 2025
ISBN: 9780593854471
Page Count: 320
Publisher: Dutton
Review Posted Online: Feb. 15, 2025
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 15, 2025
A satisfying thriller that will warm the hearts of fans who already take comfort in hating the forces of evil.
Lt. Eve Dallas’ 63rd futuristic case is less a whodunit than a manhunt for an unusually sympathetic killer.
Thirteen years ago, way back in 2048, scientific genius Steve Redman—father of the Banner-Wyst corporation’s Rainmaker Project—narrowly escaped death in a gas explosion that killed his pregnant wife and infant son and 200 other residents of their New York City apartment building the night before he planned to report his suspicions about the company to the FBI. Now the bill is coming due for Banner-Wyst. The first death to be discovered is that of Lawrence Chu, Redman’s colleague and trusted friend, whose tenure as director of bioengineering science ends when he’s beaten to death. For quite a while, Dallas and her partner, Det. Delia Peabody, know less about this mystery than their readers do. But when Ezra Dent, a consultant to Banner-Wyst who worked with Redman and Chu back in the day, is murdered in exactly the same ferocious way, Dallas and Peabody, with help from Roarke, Dallas’ tech-billionaire husband, promptly put the pieces together and determine who they’re looking for. The search for Redman, who went AWOL from his hospital bed without a trace six years ago, has its own challenges. So does Dallas’ attempt to get cooperation from partners Calvin Banner and Jacob Wyst, who are clearly in the crosshairs of a killer who seems a lot less monstrous than they are. If the breaks in the case are suspiciously convenient in arriving, readers can pride themselves on taking sides against a mega-corporation whose self-avowed ecological saintliness is undermined by its leaders’ underhanded dealing.
A satisfying thriller that will warm the hearts of fans who already take comfort in hating the forces of evil.Pub Date: Sept. 8, 2026
ISBN: 9781250414564
Page Count: 368
Publisher: St. Martin's
Review Posted Online: May 18, 2026
Kirkus Reviews Issue: June 15, 2026
The delightful debut of a classic, prolific detective.
It takes a quirky sleuth to solve a baffling closed-door murder.
The author himself or, more accurately, some version of him, walks the reader through a “gruesome murder” that occurred in a rural farming village. At the center of the crime is the wealthy Ichiyanagi family, including the widow Itoko and her five children. The “heinous crime” occurs in the evening after the festive wedding of eldest son Kenzo to schoolteacher Katsuko. Yokomizo, part narrator and part raconteur, liberally shares digressions such as the fact that his favorite British author is A.A. Milne, who wrote The Red House Mystery as well as the books about Winnie-the-Pooh. Written in 1946 but set in 1937 before the devastation of World War II, this is the first novel featuring Kosuke Kindaichi, the legendary detective who appeared in more than 70 stories by Yokomizo. If Yokomizo is the Japanese Agatha Christie, Kindaichi may seem the Japanese Hercule Poirot—although actually, given his unkempt hair and apparently distracted manner, he’s more a cross between Poirot and Columbo. Shrewdly, his entrance is delayed until midway through the novel, after the police have stalled and both the family and the reader are anxious for a solution. The narrator’s garrulous charm, in a mystery long on logistics and forensic clues but short on detailed character portraits or extended interactions, is a key to the novel’s success, leavening the more intricate pieces of the puzzle. Armchair detectives will welcome the helpful character list that precedes the story.
The delightful debut of a classic, prolific detective.Pub Date: Sept. 15, 2026
ISBN: 9781805336549
Page Count: 192
Publisher: Pushkin Vertigo
Review Posted Online: July 20, 2026
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 15, 2026
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