True crime for Lin-Manuel Miranda fans.
Willig explores a real-life unsolved murder case from early U.S. history.
December 1799: Vivacious Elma Sands leaves her cousin Caty Ring’s boardinghouse for a secret assignation; her body is later found in a well. Suspicion immediately falls on Levi Weeks, another boarder, who’s been romantically linked to Elma for several months, and the young man is quickly brought up on charges. His wealthy brother, Ezra, enlists the help of lawyers Aaron Burr and Brockholst Livingston, exhorting them only to ensure that Levi is acquitted. Enter Alexander Hamilton. Struggling under the weight of recent political disappointments and unable to stop himself from meddling in Burr’s affairs, Hamilton joins the defense team. To his mind, it’s not enough to sow doubt about Levi’s guilt—he must ensure that the young man’s reputation survives the ravages of trial. Hamilton discovers that there is at least one person with a motive for murdering Elma: her cousin Caty’s Quaker husband, Elias Ring. Willig follows the investigation and its immediate effects on Caty and her sister, Hope. As Hamilton uncovers domestic secrets, his counterpart for the prosecution, Cadwallader Colden, is rather buffoonishly preparing his case by racing sleds and racking up an incredible number of possible witnesses. The novel culminates in Levi’s trial, where the lawyers’ battling egos threaten to undo their good work. Willig has clearly done her research; the world of the fledgling 19th century leaps from the page in sensory detail, emphasizing the casual suffering of women, in particular, and the ever present threat of violence—and childbirth. Hamilton and Burr are not reduced to caricature, but held up with a loving eye on the pride and intransigence that would ultimately lead to their legendary downfalls. Above all, we witness the birth of a young nation’s legal system, and are left, perhaps, feeling better about the course of justice in 1800 than in 2025.
True crime for Lin-Manuel Miranda fans.Pub Date: March 4, 2025
ISBN: 9780063433496
Page Count: 512
Publisher: Morrow/HarperCollins
Review Posted Online: Dec. 28, 2024
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 1, 2025
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
Forget about solving all these crimes; the signal triumph here is (spoiler) the heroine’s survival.
Another sweltering month in Charlotte, another boatload of mysteries past and present for overworked, overstressed forensic anthropologist Temperance Brennan.
A week after the night she chases but fails to catch a mysterious trespasser outside her town house, some unknown party texts Tempe four images of a corpse that looks as if it’s been chewed by wild hogs, because it has been. Showboat Medical Examiner Margot Heavner makes it clear that, breaking with her department’s earlier practice (The Bone Collection, 2016, etc.), she has no intention of calling in Tempe as a consultant and promptly identifies the faceless body herself as that of a young Asian man. Nettled by several errors in Heavner’s analysis, and even more by her willingness to share the gory details at a press conference, Tempe launches her own investigation, which is not so much off the books as against the books. Heavner isn’t exactly mollified when Tempe, aided by retired police detective Skinny Slidell and a host of experts, puts a name to the dead man. But the hints of other crimes Tempe’s identification uncovers, particularly crimes against children, spur her on to redouble her efforts despite the new M.E.’s splenetic outbursts. Before he died, it seems, Felix Vodyanov was linked to a passenger ferry that sank in 1994, an even earlier U.S. government project to research biological agents that could control human behavior, the hinky spiritual retreat Sparkling Waters, the dark web site DeepUnder, and the disappearances of at least four schoolchildren, two of whom have also turned up dead. And why on earth was Vodyanov carrying Tempe’s own contact information? The mounting evidence of ever more and ever worse skulduggery will pull Tempe deeper and deeper down what even she sees as a rabbit hole before she confronts a ringleader implicated in “Drugs. Fraud. Breaking and entering. Arson. Kidnapping. How does attempted murder sound?”
Forget about solving all these crimes; the signal triumph here is (spoiler) the heroine’s survival.Pub Date: March 17, 2020
ISBN: 978-1-9821-3888-2
Page Count: 352
Publisher: Scribner
Review Posted Online: Dec. 22, 2019
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 15, 2020
More than any of his earlier cases, the comatose hero’s 26th adventure bears the hallmarks of a formal detective story.
Wyoming Game and Fish Warden Joe Pickett has been shot plenty of times before. But this time may be the last.
As Joe hovers between life and death in a Billings hospital, Box indicates that Dorn Peddy and James Dale O’Bryan are the two men who ambushed him, shot him, and left him for dead. But he doesn’t reveal who hired them or why. That’s left up to Joe’s three daughters: bird-abatement firm chief executive Sheridan, Bozeman private eye April, and University of Wyoming undergrad Lucy. Since the man who reported the incident to the Twelve Sleep County Sheriff’s Department has disappeared, the most that newly appointed Sheriff Steve Sondergard can do is to warn Sheridan and her sisters away from the case. But the fact that both the shooters and the witness seem to have come from one of exactly three places presents an obvious appeal to the younger Picketts, who plan to each visit one place and question the owners simultaneously before they can warn each other that anyone’s coming. The only problem is that all the possible suspects—billionaire Michael Thompson and his wife, Brandy, of the Double Diamond Ranch; ranchers John and Shelby Bucholz, of the Bucholz Cattle Company; and secretive sisters Lisa and Lainie McElwee, of McElwee Land and Cattle Ranch—act equally guilty. As Box unspools a series of flashbacks showing what Joe was up to in the weeks before the ambush, one question assumes paramount importance: Can Joe’s daughters identify which of them is behind the plot to murder their father before the hired gunmen visit the hospital and try again?
More than any of his earlier cases, the comatose hero’s 26th adventure bears the hallmarks of a formal detective story.Pub Date: Feb. 24, 2026
ISBN: 9780593851098
Page Count: 352
Publisher: Putnam
Review Posted Online: Nov. 22, 2025
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 1, 2026
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