by Lorna Barrett ‧ RELEASE DATE: June 13, 2017
Though Barrett’s character-driven series never provides very memorable mysteries, fans who are invested in the lives of the...
Which would you prefer, a murder investigation or a family crisis? Barrett gives her sister heroines both.
Tricia and Angelica Miles are deeply involved in making the bookish town of Stoneham, New Hampshire, into a premier tourist destination. Tricia owns the Haven't Got a Clue mystery bookstore, and Angelica owns a cafe while secretly investing in new businesses and civic improvements. The two sisters have become very close after years of estrangement caused by their parents’ lopsided favors. When their father, John, shows up at a book signing Tricia’s store is hosting for bestselling author Steven Richardson, Tricia’s darts-playing competitor Carol Talbot mysteriously slaps both men. So when she’s murdered, the two are likely suspects. The last time John was in town, his abrupt departure left Angelica to pay off his debts, and neither daughter wants him around now, especially since his cash-flow problems have tempted him into dishonest schemes. Tricia has a reputation as both an unfortunate finder of bodies and as a sleuth (Title Wave, 2016, etc.), much to the chagrin of former boyfriend and police chief Grant Baker. It turns out that Carol killed someone as a child, and Steven Richardson’s plan to use her past as the basis for a new book forces him and Tricia into a race for the truth. Meanwhile, Tricia and Angelica, hatching a plan to get their estranged parents back together, learn a lot of things about their father’s checkered past they would rather not have known. Given all the family affairs that require her attention, Tricia can barely find time for a murder investigation, even when she finds another body.
Though Barrett’s character-driven series never provides very memorable mysteries, fans who are invested in the lives of the two sisters will welcome this angst-filled installment.Pub Date: June 13, 2017
ISBN: 978-0-399-58591-3
Page Count: 320
Publisher: Berkley Prime Crime
Review Posted Online: May 14, 2017
Kirkus Reviews Issue: June 1, 2017
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by C.J. Box ‧ RELEASE DATE: July 28, 2015
A suspenseful, professional-grade north country procedural whose heroine, a deft mix of compassion and attitude, would be...
Box takes another break from his highly successful Joe Pickett series (Stone Cold, 2014, etc.) for a stand-alone about a police detective, a developmentally delayed boy, and a package everyone in North Dakota wants to grab.
Cassandra Dewell can’t leave Montana’s Lewis and Clark County fast enough for her new job as chief investigator for Jon Kirkbride, sheriff of Bakken County. She leaves behind no memories worth keeping: her husband is dead, her boss has made no bones about disliking her, and she’s looking forward to new responsibilities and the higher salary underwritten by North Dakota’s sudden oil boom. But Bakken County has its own issues. For one thing, it’s cold—a whole lot colder than the coldest weather Cassie’s ever imagined. For another, the job she turns out to have been hired for—leading an investigation her new boss doesn’t feel he can entrust to his own force—makes her queasy. The biggest problem, though, is one she doesn’t know about until it slaps her in the face. A fatal car accident that was anything but accidental has jarred loose a stash of methamphetamines and cash that’s become the center of a battle between the Sons of Freedom, Bakken County’s traditional drug sellers, and MS-13, the Salvadorian upstarts who are muscling in on their territory. It’s a setup that leaves scant room for law enforcement officers or for Kyle Westergaard, the 12-year-old paperboy damaged since birth by fetal alcohol syndrome, who’s walked away from the wreck with a prize all too many people would kill for.
A suspenseful, professional-grade north country procedural whose heroine, a deft mix of compassion and attitude, would be welcome to return and tie up the gaping loose end Box leaves. The unrelenting cold makes this the perfect beach read.Pub Date: July 28, 2015
ISBN: 978-0-312-58321-7
Page Count: 272
Publisher: Minotaur
Review Posted Online: April 21, 2015
Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 15, 2015
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by J.A. Jance ‧ RELEASE DATE: April 2, 2019
Proficient but eminently predictable. Amid all the time shifts and embedded backstories, the most surprising feature is how...
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New York Times Bestseller
A convicted killer’s list of five people he wants dead runs the gamut from the wife he’s already had murdered to franchise heroine Ali Reynolds.
Back in the day, women came from all over to consult Santa Clarita fertility specialist Dr. Edward Gilchrist. Many of them left his care happily pregnant, never dreaming that the father of the babies they carried was none other than the physician himself, who donated his own sperm rather than that of the handsome, athletic, disease-free men pictured in his scrapbook. When Alexandra Munsey’s son, Evan, is laid low by the kidney disease he’s inherited from his biological father and she returns to Gilchrist in search of the donor’s medical records, the roof begins to fall in on him. By the time it’s done falling, he’s serving a life sentence in Folsom Prison for commissioning the death of his wife, Dawn, the former nurse and sometime egg donor who’d turned on him. With nothing left to lose, Gilchrist tattoos himself with the initials of five people he blames for his fall: Dawn; Leo Manuel Aurelio, the hit man he’d hired to dispose of her; Kaitlyn Todd, the nurse/receptionist who took Dawn’s place; Alex Munsey, whose search for records upset his apple cart; and Ali Reynolds, the TV reporter who’d helped put Alex in touch with the dozen other women who formed the Progeny Project because their children looked just like hers. No matter that Ali’s been out of both California and the news business for years; Gilchrist and his enablers know that revenge can’t possibly be served too cold. Wonder how far down that list they’ll get before Ali, aided once more by Frigg, the methodical but loose-cannon AI first introduced in Duel to the Death (2018), turns on them?
Proficient but eminently predictable. Amid all the time shifts and embedded backstories, the most surprising feature is how little the boundary-challenged AI, who gets into the case more or less inadvertently, differs from your standard human sidekick with issues.Pub Date: April 2, 2019
ISBN: 978-1-5011-5101-9
Page Count: 352
Publisher: Gallery Books/Simon & Schuster
Review Posted Online: Feb. 18, 2019
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 1, 2019
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