Suspicious but forgettable characters fill out a teensy mystery. Eleven appended recipes are the highlight.
Another day, another party, another murder for Alexandria, Virginia, advice columnist/event planner Sophie Winston.
Cheesecake queen Bobbie Sue Bodoin’s Midsummer Night’s dinner party is the event of Old Town’s season, at least until the Fourth of July extravaganza Sophie’s planning for old Ms. Hollingsworth-Smythe. But Bobbie Sue’s husband, restaurateur Tate Bodoin, is absent and missing the performance their daughter Jo’s ballet class is giving. Fortunately, he’s got a great excuse: He’s lying dead in the alley in back of Blackwell’s Tavern, the place he owns and manages. The obvious suspect is Sophie’s friend Bernie Frei, whose ownership of The Laughing Hound makes him technically Tate’s business competitor. Actually, Blackwell’s assistant manager, Marsha Bathurst, darkly hints, their rivalry was much more personal. Her insinuations, joined with the forensic evidence the Alexandria police dig up, lead Sgt. Wolf Fleishman to arrest Bernie even though Bernie is such a nice guy that nobody, including Fleishman, believes him guilty—except for Marsha, whose relationship to her boss may have run deeper than suspected as well. Actually, Spencer Carver, Bobbie Sue’s first husband, may have had it in for Tate, as may their teenage son, Pierce Carver. And what about Eli Dawson, the Blackwell’s bartender who was two-timing Marsha with Laughing Hound assistant manager Eva Morales? As Sophie and her best friend, Nina Reid Norwood, swing into action, they’re stunned when one of the suspects actually asks to see their credentials. Credentials? sniffs Nina. Don’t they know about the duo’s impressive record?
Suspicious but forgettable characters fill out a teensy mystery. Eleven appended recipes are the highlight.Pub Date: May 31, 2022
ISBN: 978-1-49673-276-7
Page Count: 304
Publisher: Kensington
Review Posted Online: March 1, 2022
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 15, 2022
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
Irish charm, plenty of suspects, and some strange twists make for a winning combination.
A much-delayed honeymoon to the seacoast turns into a murder hunt.
Garda Siobhán O’Sullivan and her husband, Detective Sergeant Macdara Flannery, have escaped the heat in their hometown by traveling to coastal Lahinch, taking along Siobhán’s five siblings. Upon arrival they check out two chip shops, Mr. Chips and Mrs. Chips, which are across the street from each other, and learn that Mr. Chips’ banner and mural have just been vandalized. The dueling owners went through a nasty divorce after Mr. Chips’ affair with Mrs. Chips’ best friend, so it seems likely that his ex-wife was the vandal. The line of people waiting outside Mrs. Chips, which should have been open by now but isn’t, includes a restaurant critic, a fish supplier, a cooking oil supplier, and a man who’s come to install a new vent hood. Because they can’t get into the shop, Macdara calls local handyman John Healy, who owns the inn where the family is staying. Once inside, they find Mrs. Chips dead. Although she appears to have fallen from a ladder, Siobhán has a hunch that she was murdered. The local Gardai arrive, headed by Detective Sergeant Liam Healy, the innkeeper’s grandson, who wants to believe Mrs. Chips’ death is an accident but is willing to consider murder. Macdara just wants to be a man of leisure, but Siobhán, who can never let a puzzle go unsolved, starts asking questions while her family members enjoy themselves and pursue new romantic attachments. Mrs. Chips had plenty of enemies, but when the next to die is John Healy, Siobhán and Macdara realize this case will be more complicated than they thought.
Irish charm, plenty of suspects, and some strange twists make for a winning combination.Pub Date: Feb. 20, 2024
ISBN: 9781496744449
Page Count: 304
Publisher: Kensington
Review Posted Online: Nov. 4, 2023
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Dec. 1, 2023
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
An appropriately decorous, if not terribly mystifying, valediction for a surprisingly resourceful sleuth.
Though it’s set in an insular English boarding school, the fictional Jane Austen’s 15th and final case strikes uncomfortably close to home.
At first the death of Arthur Prendergast, a bullying prefect at Winchester College, is a cause for rejoicing for William Heathcote, the nephew of Jane’s dear friend Alethea Bigg, whose stutter made him a natural target for Prenders’ daily torments. But several rapid developments dramatically reverse William’s feelings. The overbearing prefect didn’t throw himself into the culvert in which he apparently drowned but was bashed on the head beforehand. The note inviting Prenders to a meeting there was written by William himself. And after Peter Insley, the prefect’s chief disciple, testifies to a coroner’s jury that William had been involved in an unseemly relationship with a local woman, William, who’s also suspected of starting a suspicious fire at the college, is indicted for Prendergast’s murder and carried off to jail. The fatal bout of apoplexy of Baronet Frederick Beaumont, the prefect’s father, signals further troubles that persist beyond William’s arrest. Luckily, Jane, alerted by her nephew Edward, a Winchester alumnus who’s remained interested in the college, is on the case. Despite the gnawing illness that will soon end her life at 41, she descends sedately but incisively on the college, raising questions no one else dares to raise with the headmaster, Dr. Gabell, and his elderly and resentful second-in-command, Ruthven Clarke, and eventually uncovering a secret birthright that provides a motive for a suspect whom many readers will have been watching alertly from the beginning.
An appropriately decorous, if not terribly mystifying, valediction for a surprisingly resourceful sleuth.Pub Date: Oct. 24, 2023
ISBN: 9781641295055
Page Count: 312
Publisher: Soho Crime
Review Posted Online: July 26, 2023
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 15, 2023
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
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