The story moves slowly, and its telling includes excessively didactic explanations of Irish vernacular. The results are...
Something dark and twisted in the Irish village of Lisfenora brings American Merrit Chase together again with DS Danny Ahern (Whispers in the Mist, 2016, etc.).
After Elder Joe, a regular at the local pub, is brutally stabbed in his home, Merrit is the unfortunate who finds his body. Joe had been exploiting Cecil Wallace, his elderly lodger, but Cecil doesn’t seem to have anyone who would avenge him. Ahern’s on the case even though his thoughts are with his wife, who lies comatose in a hospital bed. Merrit is also inclined to meddle, but she’s distracted by her ailing father and his wish that she take on his role as village matchmaker. Meanwhile, potter Nathan Tate is profoundly traumatized, and his beautiful, charming, and unsettlingly attentive daughter, Zoe, somehow only seems to make him worse despite her falsely modest claims to be a miraculous healer. What helps Nathan more is his burgeoning romance with Annie Belden, but she must cope with her own haunting past and present threats. An urgent text message sends Nathan and Merrit rushing to Annie’s home, where they find her corpse along with an ominous bouquet of dead flowers. Danny interviews Annie’s therapist and finds yet another severely mentally ill person in her past. Is Nathan terrified of ordinary human evil, or is Zoe truly supernatural?
The story moves slowly, and its telling includes excessively didactic explanations of Irish vernacular. The results are atmospheric but unsatisfying.Pub Date: Aug. 8, 2017
ISBN: 978-0-7387-5057-6
Page Count: 384
Publisher: Midnight Ink/Llewellyn
Review Posted Online: May 14, 2017
Kirkus Reviews Issue: June 1, 2017
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
Perfect for readers who wish To Kill a Mockingbird had been presented from a slightly older, male point of view.
Eskens’ latest novel is a warmhearted story of a white teenager's awakening to the racial tensions that run through his Missouri town in 1976.
Years before he’ll become a successful attorney (The Shadows We Hide, 2018, etc.), Boady Sanden struggles to navigate all the usual high school ordeals in small-town Jessup, including boring subjects and bullying by the likes of all-state wrestler and prom king Jarvis Halcomb. In Boady’s case, these everyday problems are aggravated by his outsider status as a non-Catholic freshman at St. Ignatius High School, his home life with his widowed, introverted mother, Emma, and, most recently, the arrival of some new neighbors, the Elgins. Charles Elgin is definitely an improvement on indolent Cecil Halcomb, Jarvis' father, whom he replaces as manager of the local manufacturing plant after bookkeeper Lida Poe disappears with more than $100,000 of the plant’s money. Jenna Elgin is excellent company for Emma Sanden, whom she helps draw out of her shell. And after a comically unfortunate first encounter, Boady quickly takes to their son, Thomas, who’s exactly his age. But the Elgins, like Lida Poe, are African American, and the combination of an unsolved embezzlement, good old boy Cecil’s displacement by an outsider, and the town’s incipient racism works slowly but inexorably to put Boady, recruited by the Crusaders of Racial Purity and Strength, under pressure to betray his new friendship. Declining to join the racists but repeatedly running away rather than refusing their demands point blank, Boady must navigate a perilous route to supporting his community and claiming his own adult identity.
Perfect for readers who wish To Kill a Mockingbird had been presented from a slightly older, male point of view.Pub Date: Nov. 12, 2019
ISBN: 978-0-316-50972-5
Page Count: 304
Publisher: Mulholland Books/Little, Brown
Review Posted Online: Aug. 18, 2019
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 1, 2019
What starts off as Easter eggs ends up as one big, shapeless omelet in Lucy’s feckless 21st.
A holiday tradition turns lethal in small-town Maine.
The residents of Tinker’s Cove have always dressed their toddlers in their Sunday best for the annual Easter egg hunt at Vivian Van Vorst’s beautiful mansion. But this year, Pine Point is looking a bit seedy. The lawn is unkempt, no one is directing traffic, and VV is nowhere to be seen. Worst of all, her grandson, Van Vorst Duff, dressed in a bunny suit, drops dead at the gates of the estate before he can hide a single egg. Lucy Stone (Chocolate Covered Murder, 2011, etc.), ace reporter for the Tinker’s Cove Pennysaver, takes time off from covering the town council meeting to help her colleague Phyllis’ niece Elfrida cater Van’s funeral—giving her plenty of opportunity to snoop. She discovers that VV is being confined to her room and fed nothing but canned nutritional supplement while her granddaughter Vicky Allen and Vicky’s husband, Henry, aided by unscrupulous lawyer George Weatherby, sell off her priceless art treasures. When the Allens give VV’s faithful butler Willis the sack, they have a fight on their hands. Thanks to local attorney Bob Goodman, the trio is brought to trial on charges of elder abuse. Reporters from all over the country choke the streets of Gilead, the county seat. Famous defense attorney Howard Zuzick, representing the Allens, looks as if he might have some tricks up his sleeve. But surprise! Meier drops that plot and instead packs Lucy off on a mission to hunt down VV’s long-lost daughter for former librarian Miss Julia Tilley.
What starts off as Easter eggs ends up as one big, shapeless omelet in Lucy’s feckless 21st.Pub Date: Jan. 29, 2013
ISBN: 978-0-7582-2935-9
Page Count: 304
Publisher: Kensington
Review Posted Online: Dec. 12, 2012
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 1, 2013
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
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