Yet another chapter in the saccharine saga of Pickax, a far northern town where bad things keep happening to good people (The Cat Who Said Cheese, 1996, etc.). The town's moving spirit is zillionaire Jim Qwilleran, who, accompanied by prescient cats Koko and Yum-Yum, has just moved for the winter months into a condo in Indian Village. Jim's column in the Moose County Something puts him in the center of Pickax's social scene, currently abuzz over Danielle, bride of new banker Willard Carmichael. Danielle's shrill persona and vulgar style mark her as a town misfit. That doesn't apply to her visiting cousin Carter Lee, a low-key, personable architect much interested in Pleasant Street's row of old mansions, which he wants to restore and have placed in the Historic Register. There's also gossip about a recent series of large thefts. All this gives way to shock when banker Carmichael, on a business trip to Detroit, is mugged and fatally shot. Danielle is soon back in circulation and Carter Lee continues to press his preservation scheme, at the same time courting Lynette, the 40ish, never married sister-in-law of Jim Qwilleran's best friend, Polly Duncan. Jim, in full Scots dress, is best man at the wedding. News from New Orleans of Lynette's death (of gastrointestinal complications) starts signals flying from Koko and Yum-Yum, prompting Jim to get to the bottom of it all. Dolls, dirks, dowsers, and kilts, along with folklore and cat lore—all clutter the story, and the murder puzzle, minus suspense or surprise, barely emerges from the flow. Die-hard cat and cozy fans may cheer. For others, a benign waste of time. (Literary Guild alternate; Mystery Guild main selection)
Pub Date: Feb. 10, 1997
ISBN: 0-399-14210-X
Page Count: 256
Publisher: Putnam
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Dec. 1, 1996
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
Leisurely, conscientiously plotted, smoothly written, and more surprising in its details than its larger arc.
A fatal accident that tangles the fates of three ill-assorted people when two cars crash into each other outside a Gloucester village raises urgent questions about the living.
Hours after being ejected from the Lamb, Viv Holland’s pub in Lower Slaughter, her former boss Fergus O’Reilly, who’s turned up without warning and pressed her to take a new job 12 years after she quit his Michelin-rated Chelsea restaurant, is found dead after a collision outside the village. Nor is he the only victim: Nell Greene, the Lamb patron who’d picked up Fergus when she saw him walking uncertainly along the road to drive him to the hospital, has also died at the scene. And there’s evidence that Fergus was fatally poisoned even before the crash. The Met’s Detective Superintendent Duncan Kincaid and his wife, DI Gemma James, are on hand to investigate because they’ve accepted an invitation to stay at Beck House, the home of DS Melody Talbot’s wealthy parents, Sir Ivan and Lady Adelaide Talbot, for whom Viv has agreed to cater an elaborate charity luncheon. But Kincaid, who was driving the car Nell struck and survived the collision only to see Nell die as he looked on helplessly, isn’t himself either physically or mentally, and the solution seems a long way off. There’ll be another murder, a series of increasingly revealing flashbacks to Viv’s stint at O’Reilly’s 12 years ago, and endless updates on the sexual histories of the suspects with the victims, each other, and the police. Through it all, Kincaid and Gemma (Garden of Lamentations, 2017, etc.) keep stiff upper lips even when the dark revelations reach into Beck House.
Leisurely, conscientiously plotted, smoothly written, and more surprising in its details than its larger arc.Pub Date: Oct. 8, 2019
ISBN: 978-0-06-227166-2
Page Count: 384
Publisher: Morrow/HarperCollins
Review Posted Online: July 14, 2019
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 1, 2019
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
You have seven days to live after reading this review. Is that your phone ringing?
First in a trilogy by a newcomer publishing house that promises high-class works from Japan.
Ring has sold three million copies in its native country, says Vertical, been filmed there, and the film remade here as a postmodern horror mystery released by DreamWorks as The Ring. In one month in 1990, four Japanese students who live fairly near each other die mysteriously of heart failure. Tomoko Oishi dies in the family kitchen, Shuichi Iwata on his motorcycle while waiting for the light to change at an intersection, and Haruko Tsuji and Takehiko Nomi in the front seat of a car while undressing for sexplay. All four have faces constricted with horror and seem to be pulling their heads off or blinding their vision. Tomoko happens to be the niece of Kazuyuki Asakawa, a journalist, who links all the deaths and sees a story in it. Japanese journalism has been through a heavy period of occult reports, and Asakawa’s editor only hopes it has all died down. A card Asakawa finds in Tomoko’s desk leads him to discover that all four victims had watched a video tape they’d been warned against viewing—a tape, as it happens, that’s something of a virus (in Asakawa, its horrific images cause sweat and shortness of breath). Then comes the message: Those who view these images are fated to die at this exact moment one week from now. If you do not wish to die, you must follow these instructions exactly . . . . Then the phone rings (hence Ring) and unspeakable bugs invade Asakawa until he slams down the receiver. Too late, though: he has a week to live. He brings in brainy Ruiji to help him, and Ruiji watches the tape. This stifling sense—is it an evil energy? Then Asakawa’s wife and daughter watch it . . . .
You have seven days to live after reading this review. Is that your phone ringing?Pub Date: May 1, 2003
ISBN: 1-932234-00-4
Page Count: 352
Publisher: Vertical
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 15, 2003
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