An impeccably written tale laced with humor and featuring unorthodox, believable detectives.
A body found dead in a creek marks the beginning of a complex case for Chickasaw Lighthorse Police Sgt. Bill Maytubby.
Maytubby is far from your average cop. Educated in the classics at St. John’s College in Santa Fe, where he also learned to fly planes, he’s a health food–chomping advocate for tribal concerns. His favorite partner in detection is Johnston County Deputy Hannah Bond, an unusual woman herself. The dead man, who’s wearing expensive fly-fishing gear that doesn’t fit him, is discovered far from a public access area in a little creek on the property of Deborah Laber and her son, Jason, who's deaf and may have been a witness to the crime. Maytubby, an excellent tracker, finds large, smooth footprints at the scene and two marks of a wheeled cart ending near an old car with no belts or battery. Meanwhile, after wrecking her missing husband’s truck, an intoxicated Tula Verner complains about her husband’s affair to Maytubby and Hannah, and a man on disability hefts big blocks of stone to build a replica of Roman Jerusalem while trying to steal his neighbor's land. The state police push Maytubby and Hannah aside to concentrate on Tula when the dead man is identified as her husband, but the independent pair, undeterred, follow a trail leading to Texas and probable Medicare fraud. Deborah and Jason become targets and hide at Hannah’s house while she and Maytubby pursue an oddly incompetent but deadly gang of criminals.
An impeccably written tale laced with humor and featuring unorthodox, believable detectives.Pub Date: July 13, 2021
ISBN: 978-1-982689-27-8
Page Count: 208
Publisher: Blackstone
Review Posted Online: May 18, 2021
Kirkus Reviews Issue: June 1, 2021
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
An engaging whodunit that explores the deadly side of karmic retribution.
A group of strangers find their lives irrevocably intertwined after each one receives a note at an anonymously hosted gathering with mortally chilling information.
When seven Londoners meet at a posh underground dinner party on a street “reek[ing] of disappointment,” most believe they have walked into a PR stunt. The party stops being entertaining when mysterious black envelopes appear in front of each guest containing cards inscribed with the age each person will be when they die. In a narrative that shifts among the perspectives of the seven dinner guests, Whittle creates a story that probes her characters’ psychology as it pays homage to Agatha Christie’s classic 1939 murder mystery, And Then There Were None. After three of the dinner party invitees die at exactly the ages predicted, one especially inquisitive and astute guest, Vivienne, surmises that the deaths—which at first seem tragically accidental—were more likely the work of a murderous mastermind. Her hunch only gets stronger when she hypothesizes that the anthropomorphic depictions of the seven deadly sins she saw on each diner’s card offered a clue to the identity of the “devil” committing the crimes. She and the remaining guests scramble in quiet dread to “make the most” of the time before their number is up, never suspecting that the very person they fear is closer at hand and more aware of their secrets than they could ever imagine. Readers with a penchant for colorful characters, twisty plots, and surprise reveals will find this novel of suspense especially satisfying.
An engaging whodunit that explores the deadly side of karmic retribution.Pub Date: Sept. 9, 2025
ISBN: 9781464242403
Page Count: 352
Publisher: Sourcebooks Landmark
Review Posted Online: May 30, 2025
Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 1, 2025
Foodies and mystery lovers will come for the red herrings and stay for the cheese.
It starts with a food fight and ends with murder.
Carly Hale’s dream of opening a restaurant specializing in everything grilled cheese has finally come to fruition. When her part-time helper, Grant Robinson, quits his job at Sub-a-Dub-Sub, his irritable ex-boss, Ferris Menard, naturally blames Carly. Both owners have entered the Halloween festival food contest, and tensions run even higher after Menard accuses Carly of trying to ruin his business and somebody paints a skull on her car. The announcement of the winner is held up by the discovery that the ballot box has been stuffed. The next morning Menard is found dead. Though there’s a steak knife in his chest, it turns out that he was dead before he was stabbed. Chief Holloway, who’s familiar with Carly’s sleuthing skills, warns her off, but the framing of her boyfriend, Ari Mitchell, for the murder guarantees that she’ll ignore the chief’s advice. Perhaps unwisely, she hires Menard’s daughter, Holly, who needs a job while the sub shop is closed. Carly learns a lot more about Menard’s background as a lifelong resident, including the high school bullying and the divorce that made him plenty of enemies. One of her best customers is a retired teacher who keeps leaving her unusual poems of encouragement. Could her knowledge solve the case?
Foodies and mystery lovers will come for the red herrings and stay for the cheese.Pub Date: July 26, 2022
ISBN: 978-1-72823-835-7
Page Count: 336
Publisher: Poisoned Pen
Review Posted Online: April 26, 2022
Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 15, 2022
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
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