A promising debut with scads of interesting characters, a spirited heroine, and a hint of romance.
The murder of a flamboyant singer brings a hairdresser closer to her dream job.
Daisy Thorne owns a popular beauty salon in the small English village of Edgemead, but her real love is crime, perhaps because she spent much of her childhood with her police detective grandfather and is currently taking courses in forensic psychology. Surprisingly, her best friend is wealthy socialite Floria Levante, whose much-married mother, Dame Serena, is a world-renowned opera singer and neglectful mother. When Dame Serena is found dead at their magnificent home shortly after Collin Harrison, her current husband, announces that he’s leaving her, there’s no dearth of suspects to choose from among former husbands and lovers. The detective in charge is attractive DI Paul McGuinness, whose chilly demeanor warms a bit when Daisy starts bringing him helpful tidbits of gossip she’s gleaned as a member of Floria’s social set. The theft of a valuable Modigliani adds more motives for murder. The real shocker comes after the solicitor mentions that Dame Serena planned to change her will. Floria has three illegitimate half sisters, all given away before she was born. She’s delighted to hear she has sisters even though their status as potential heirs of Serena’s fortune gives them all a reason to want her dead. Plenty of poking and prying plus inside information steer Daisy to a surprising conclusion.
A promising debut with scads of interesting characters, a spirited heroine, and a hint of romance.Pub Date: Dec. 1, 2020
ISBN: 978-1-4967-2980-4
Page Count: 288
Publisher: Kensington
Review Posted Online: Sept. 15, 2020
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Oct. 1, 2020
BOOK REVIEW
Enough clues, red herrings, and false endings to make readers feel that the Orient Express has put out to sea.
A luxury liner bound for New York in 1924 becomes the scene of a twisty golden age pastiche.
When an unnamed third-class passenger discovers the body of an elderly man at the bottom of an exterior flight of stairs aboard the Endeavour, Capt. McCrory insists it must be an accident. But James Temple, a Scotland Yard detective who just happens to be aboard, says that no one would have ventured to the outdoor steps in the rain without a coat, so the death should be treated as suspicious. Unable to stop Temple from investigating, McCrory assigns ship’s officer Timothy Birch to accompany him, and Birch promptly becomes the world’s most unwilling Dr. Watson, constantly battling Temple over theories and procedures. Anxious that they have only four days to find a potential killer before the ship docks and lets its 2,000 passengers roam free in New York, he’s especially infuriated at the leisurely pace marked by Temple’s bromide, “Facts before witnesses.” There’s reason to sympathize with Temple, because the suspects in first and second class (the only classes that matter in this ultra-class-conscious world) are cardboard cutouts—the successful banker, his trophy wife, the aspiring artists, the gallery owner—who are much less interesting than the secrets they’re hiding. In his most anachronistic development, author Hindle shows Birch, unlike the imperturbable sidekicks he echoes, sunk in grief over his vanished daughter, Amelia, and his estranged wife, Kate, who left him after Amelia disappeared during one of his ocean voyages. He’d do anything to get his daughter back, he tells Temple, and his determination leads to the biggest surprise of all.
Enough clues, red herrings, and false endings to make readers feel that the Orient Express has put out to sea.Pub Date: Sept. 29, 2026
ISBN: 9798217185740
Page Count: 464
Publisher: Dutton
Review Posted Online: July 20, 2026
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 15, 2026
Everything you’d expect from Grisham, and this time something more.
After more than three decades of producing bestselling legal thrillers, Grisham tries his hand at a whodunit.
Eleanor Barnett wants Simon Latch to write her a will. That’s pretty much his job description, since practicing law in Braxton, Virginia, for 18 years hasn’t given him much opportunity to spread his wings. But the case of Netty, as she insists he call her, is different. She’s an 85-year-old widow whose second husband, Harry Korsak, left her with something like $20 million in cash and securities. She has a pair of stepsons, Clyde and Jerry Korsak, she’s determined to disinherit. And she already has a will, a document Wally Thackerman drafted a few weeks ago that basically allowed him, as Simon soon discovers, to pillage her estate. So instead of following his usual procedure and asking his longtime secretary, Matilda Clark, to type out the will, Simon types it himself and has it witnessed without saying anything to her. Of course he’d never do what Wally Thackerman did, but given his poverty, his gambling addiction, and his estrangement from his wife, Paula, whose income is a lot more stable than his own, he wouldn’t mind drawing just a bit on Netty’s wealth. As it happens, his new client turns out to be more trouble than she’s worth, maybe even more trouble than she would’ve been worth to Wally. And when she ends up dying, her death is swiftly identified as murder, with every indication that Simon killed her himself. The whodunit is unremarkable, but Grisham handles the legal complexities of the case with professional finesse and adds a wonderfully poignant portrait of a nothingburger lawyer trying his best to keep things more or less legal.
Everything you’d expect from Grisham, and this time something more.Pub Date: Oct. 21, 2025
ISBN: 9780385548984
Page Count: 416
Publisher: Doubleday
Review Posted Online: July 4, 2025
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 1, 2025
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
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