All this musing and fretting pushes the murder, when it finally arrives, into the back pages of Meier’s 25th, and the...
The Tinker’s Cove Giant Pumpkin Fest turns into a giant pain in the squash for The Pennysaver’s intrepid reporter Lucy Stone (Christmas Carol Murder, 2013, etc.).
It isn’t as if Lucy doesn’t have enough on her plate. Her son, Toby, and daughter-in-law, Molly, are off studying fish farming in Haiti, leaving her in charge of 4-year-old Patrick. Between Molly’s strict ban on sugar and television and the draconian safety rules head teacher Heidi Bloom has instituted at Little Prodigies preschool, Lucy’s hard-pressed to keep up with her active grandson, who wants to be a ninja for Halloween, when, naturally, all the ninja costumes are sold out. Her husband, Bill, lavishes his affections on Priscilla, the perhaps 500-pound beauty he hopes to enter in the festival’s Giant Pumpkin contest. Bill’s even been paying scruffy Evan Wickes, local jack-of-all-trades, to help him build a catapult designed to win the pumpkin-hurling contest. Still, Lucy tries her best to be upbeat as she covers a wide range of festival events, musing as she does on the creeping commercialism that’s taken over Christmas and now threatens Halloween. She even seeks out an interview with Sam “Buck” Miller, youngest in the line of proprietors of Country Cousins, a Tinker’s Cove institution that provides local residents with everything from polo shirts to tire irons. She also collaborates with former librarian Julia Ward Howe Tilley, now well into her 90s, on plans for Tinker’s Cove’s Take Back the Night Rally as her daughter, Sara, now a sophomore at Winchester College, frets about the erosion of women’s access to reproductive health care.
All this musing and fretting pushes the murder, when it finally arrives, into the back pages of Meier’s 25th, and the solution is barely a footnote.Pub Date: Aug. 25, 2015
ISBN: 978-0-7582-7707-7
Page Count: 304
Publisher: Kensington
Review Posted Online: June 14, 2015
Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 1, 2015
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
An anodyne visit with Tricia and her friends and enemies hung on a thin mystery.
Too much free time leads a New Hampshire bookseller into yet another case of murder.
Now that Tricia Miles has Pixie Poe and Mr. Everett practically running her bookstore, Haven’t Got a Clue, she finds herself at loose ends. Her wealthy sister, Angelica, who in the guise of Nigela Ricita has invested heavily in making Stoneham a bookish tourist attraction, is entering the amateur competition for the Great Booktown Bake-Off. So Tricia, who’s recently taken up baking as a hobby, decides to join her and spends a lot of time looking for the perfect cupcake recipe. A visit to another bookstore leaves Tricia witnessing a nasty argument between owner Joyce Widman and next-door neighbor Vera Olson over the trimming of tree branches that hang over Joyce’s yard—also overheard by new town police officer Cindy Pearson. After Tricia accepts Joyce’s offer of some produce from her garden, they find Vera skewered by a pitchfork, and when Police Chief Grant Baker arrives, Joyce is his obvious suspect. Ever since Tricia moved to Stoneham, the homicide rate has skyrocketed (Poisoned Pages, 2018, etc.), and her history with Baker is fraught. She’s also become suspicious about the activities at Pets-A-Plenty, the animal shelter where Vera was a dedicated volunteer. Tricia’s offered her expertise to the board, but president Toby Kingston has been less than welcoming. With nothing but baking on her calendar, Tricia has plenty of time to investigate both the murder and her vague suspicions about the shelter. Plenty of small-town friendships and rivalries emerge in her quest for the truth.
An anodyne visit with Tricia and her friends and enemies hung on a thin mystery.Pub Date: Aug. 13, 2019
ISBN: 978-1-9848-0272-9
Page Count: 320
Publisher: Berkley
Review Posted Online: May 26, 2019
Kirkus Reviews Issue: June 15, 2019
A murder is committed in a stalled transcontinental train in the Balkans, and every passenger has a watertight alibi. But Hercule Poirot finds a way.
**Note: This classic Agatha Christie mystery was originally published in England as Murder on the Orient Express, but in the United States as Murder in the Calais Coach. Kirkus reviewed the book in 1934 under the original US title, but we changed the title in our database to the now recognizable title Murder on the Orient Express. This is the only name now known for the book. The reason the US publisher, Dodd Mead, did not use the UK title in 1934 was to avoid confusion with the 1932 Graham Greene novel, Orient Express.
Pub Date: Feb. 28, 1934
ISBN: 978-0062073495
Page Count: -
Publisher: Dodd, Mead
Review Posted Online: Sept. 20, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 1, 1934
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