The secret is out; a teenage sleuth makes a welcome debut on the crime scene.
In this mystery, an aunt’s deathbed confession compels a high schooler to turn up the heat on a cold case.
Officer Donnie Ray Carr, 26, disappeared without a trace in 1943. Eight years later, “barely seventeen” Gracie Dawson receives shocking news at her Aunt Clara’s hospital deathbed. First, she is told she has a heretofore undisclosed cousin, a little boy. Second, someone named William killed Carr. As to the former, Clara begs, “Find my little boy, Gracie.” As to the latter, all Clara will cryptically say is “Norton Train Station, September 1943.” Gracie’s father happens to be named William; he cheated on her mother, leading to a nasty divorce. But Clara has left everything to Gracie, including her “stupefying secrets,” and so the teen is determined to do right by her. With the help of her boyfriend, Obie Sayer, whose father is the local police chief and who hopes to assume that role someday, she turns amateur sleuth. She visits the Norton Train Station, where Gracie learns somebody left an infant in 1943. Clara is identified as the mother. But who is the father? And is the baby’s paternity connected to Carr’s disappearance? Gracie and Obie’s “after-death meddling” yields a hidden suitcase that contains a birth certificate identifying the illegitimate boy’s father: William Avery Dollarhide, a state senator who’s on “top of the heap” as part of the local foundry empire. McCall reveals this early on, which may frustrate armchair detectives. But this well-written small-town noir is a brisk read that should captivate both YA readers for its plucky teenage hero as well as adults with a penchant for crime stories that revolve around shadowy figures in high places. In this series opener, Gracie is a believable and empathetic character. She is much like Teresa Wright in Alfred Hitchcock’s film Shadow of a Doubt,who discovers, as Gracie puts it, “there’s such a wideness to the world.” Gracie is in over her head but in thrall to the thrill of having been entrusted with her aunt’s confession: “Of course, I don’t really know anything but the idea gives me goosebumps all the same.”
The secret is out; a teenage sleuth makes a welcome debut on the crime scene.Pub Date: N/A
ISBN: 978-1-73755-530-8
Page Count: 158
Publisher: JJ Publishers, LLC
Review Posted Online: Feb. 10, 2022
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
BOOK REVIEW
An evocative and moving tribute to the death-defying, heart-opening, infinitely redemptive power of storytelling.
A chance meeting in a museum unlocks a long-closed door in a family’s past.
Of a piece with her last three novels—Commonwealth (2016), The Dutch House (2019), and Tom Lake (2023)—Patchett’s latest explores the evolution of families over time, romantic secrets, and step-relationships, again giving these topics the wry and tender treatment that is distinctively hers. As it begins, Daphne Fuller’s attentive husband, Jonathan, notices that a man has been following them through the Metropolitan Museum of Art. At first they chalk it up to the fact that “old guys love [Daphne],” as she told Jonathan decades ago, a notion he has held onto "like a souvenir postcard from another era." But it turns out that, though Daphne doesn’t recognize him, Eddie Triplett is her former stepfather. Like the author herself, as recalled in her 2020 essay “Three Fathers,” Daphne has had three dads. Her biological father, a deep-sea fisherman named Buddy Zabriskie, left the family early; her current stepfather, Lucas Ekker, lives with her mother in retirement in Massachusetts. Ekker is an unprepossessing sort Abby met working as the publicist for his self-help books, Positivity!, Positively Positive!, The Positivity Workbook!, Positive Every Day!, ad infinitum. The man in the museum, Eddie Triplett, was also someone her mother met through her job in publishing, and once Daphne realizes who he is, she remembers that “[their] hearts were forever stitched together.” This is because Daphne and Eddie were in a serious car accident when she was 9 years old, after which her mother immediately divorced him and evicted him from their lives. The details of that accident—among them lies the reason the novel is named after a horse called Whistler—are gradually wheedled out of Daphne by her younger sister, Leda, a clinical psychologist in New York and a reliable source of insight on the narrative’s key issues. “‘You make it sound like I’ve been keeping all this from you, but I’m not,’ [Daphne] said. ‘Who goes through life thinking about what happened when they were nine?’ ‘It’s all people think about,’ Leda said.”
An evocative and moving tribute to the death-defying, heart-opening, infinitely redemptive power of storytelling.Pub Date: June 2, 2026
ISBN: 9780063511637
Page Count: 304
Publisher: Harper/HarperCollins
Review Posted Online: April 6, 2026
Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 1, 2026
PERSPECTIVES
PERSPECTIVES
SEEN & HEARD
An affecting portrait of a prickly woman.
A lifetime’s worth of letters combine to portray a singular character.
Sybil Van Antwerp, a cantankerous but exceedingly well-mannered septuagenarian, is the titular correspondent in Evans’ debut novel. Sybil has retired from a beloved job as chief clerk to a judge with whom she had previously been in private legal practice. She is the divorced mother of two living adult children and one who died when he was 8. She is a reader of novels, a gardener, and a keen observer of human nature. But the most distinguishing thing about Sybil is her lifelong practice of letter writing. As advancing vision problems threaten Sybil’s carefully constructed way of life—in which letters take the place of personal contact and engagement—she must reckon with unaddressed issues from her past that threaten the house of cards (letters, really) she has built around herself. Sybil’s relationships are gradually revealed in the series of letters sent to and received from, among others, her brother, sister-in-law, children, former work associates, and, intriguingly, literary icons including Joan Didion and Larry McMurtry. Perhaps most affecting is the series of missives Sybil writes but never mails to a shadowy figure from her past. Thoughtful musings on the value and immortal quality of letters and the written word populate one of Sybil’s notes to a young correspondent while other messages are laugh-out-loud funny, tinged with her characteristic blunt tartness. Evans has created a brusque and quirky yet endearing main character with no shortage of opinions and advice for others but who fails to excavate the knotty difficulties of her own life. As Sybil grows into a delayed self-awareness, her letters serve as a chronicle of fitful growth.
An affecting portrait of a prickly woman.Pub Date: May 6, 2025
ISBN: 9780593798430
Page Count: 304
Publisher: Crown
Review Posted Online: Feb. 15, 2025
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 15, 2025
© Copyright 2026 Kirkus Media LLC. All Rights Reserved.
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