This tale offers a promising foundation for a series featuring a strong, complicated investigator.
A battered ex-cop seeking a new life runs smack into his past in this philosophical thriller.
In this series opener, Buchanan introduces readers to former cop Sean “Mick” McPherson, still recovering from a past trauma. His partner, Sam, was killed by a sniper in an ambush. But Sam may have been the lucky one. In the car crash following the death of Sam, who was driving, Mick was left temporarily paralyzed. While he regained mobility, he has been wracked by survivor’s guilt for the past five years. That’s why he retired and has been working at the Pines & Quill writers retreat, run by his older sister, Libby, and her husband, Niall MacCullough. This month’s group of writers includes psychic Cynthia Winters; bitter, divorced Fran Davies; wheelchair-bound potter Emma Benton; and standoffish Jason Hughes. Something changes in Mick when he meets Emma. She finds herself falling for him as well. But Mick doesn’t realize that he has a tie to Jason, a serial killer who comes to the retreat with revenge in mind. Cynthia picks up on Jason’s malice; fearing her abilities, he decides to kill her. But resident dog Hemingway comes to her rescue. After narrowly avoiding death, Jason decides to abduct Emma and use her as bait to lure Mick. Then it’s a race for Mick to rescue Emma in time. Buchanan, a retired holistic health practitioner and life coach and the author of The Business of Being (2018), has made a strong transition from nonfiction to fiction with her first novel. Yes, her former jobs leak through with mentions of therapeutic methods. But that truly doesn’t affect the narrative. The author has created a stable of likable, well-rounded characters, starting with the damaged Mick. Especially winning is Irish wolfhound Hemingway, who speaks volumes without saying a word. Jason is an unhinged, single-dimensional loon, to use a nonpsychological term, and is easy to root against. Buchanan’s narrative is well paced, flying right along. But the book ends abruptly, with the author hanging on to certain elements, such as Jason’s accomplice, for use in the series’ sequel. This leaves the volume with a slightly unfinished feel. Still, overall, the author has delivered an exciting beginning to an intriguing series.
This tale offers a promising foundation for a series featuring a strong, complicated investigator.Pub Date: April 6, 2021
ISBN: 978-1-68463-071-4
Page Count: 304
Publisher: SparkPress
Review Posted Online: Oct. 22, 2020
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
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
A top-class cozy infused with dry wit and charming characters who draw you in and leave you wanting more, please.
Four residents of Coopers Chase, a British retirement village, compete with the police to solve a murder in this debut novel.
The Thursday Murder Club started out with a group of septuagenarians working on old murder cases culled from the files of club founder Elizabeth Best’s friend Penny Gray, a former police officer who's now comatose in the village's nursing home. Elizabeth used to have an unspecified job, possibly as a spy, that has left her with a large network of helpful sources. Joyce Meadowcroft is a former nurse who chronicles their deeds. Psychiatrist Ibrahim Arif and well-known political firebrand Ron Ritchie complete the group. They charm Police Constable Donna De Freitas, who, visiting to give a talk on safety at Coopers Chase, finds the residents sharp as tacks. Built with drug money on the grounds of a convent, Coopers Chase is a high-end development conceived by loathsome Ian Ventham and maintained by dangerous crook Tony Curran, who’s about to be fired and replaced with wary but willing Bogdan Jankowski. Ventham has big plans for the future—as soon as he’s removed the nuns' bodies from the cemetery. When Curran is murdered, DCI Chris Hudson gets the case, but Elizabeth uses her influence to get the ambitious De Freitas included, giving the Thursday Club a police source. What follows is a fascinating primer in detection as British TV personality Osman allows the members to use their diverse skills to solve a series of interconnected crimes.
A top-class cozy infused with dry wit and charming characters who draw you in and leave you wanting more, please.Pub Date: Sept. 22, 2020
ISBN: 978-1-98-488096-3
Page Count: 368
Publisher: Pamela Dorman/Viking
Review Posted Online: June 30, 2020
Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 15, 2020
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