Like its characters, this mystery is engaging, compelling, and rough around the edges.
Members of an Oklahoma family trying to recover from tragedy reel from the news that the incarcerated relative who terrorized them is being released from prison.
In this third installment of Lipinski’s mystery series, Zane Clearwater, six weeks into police training, learns that his half brother, Clyde Doom, will get out of prison to await a new trial. Clyde had been convicted of kidnapping Zane’s sister, Lettie, now 16 years old and pregnant. Clyde’s conviction was overturned on a technicality. Oklahoma’s 2020 McGirt ruling will allow Clyde to be out on bail before a new trial because, like Zane, he is part Cherokee, and the crime occurred within Native American borders when he was a juvenile. Zane lives in a mobile home with his grandmother Verda, Lettie, and the teen’s boyfriend, Angel. After learning of Clyde’s upcoming release, Lettie gets spooked when she receives a baby rattle from an anonymous sender, and the police academy suspends Zane because he’s accused of selling meth. Someone seems to be working with still-incarcerated Clyde to upset the family members and probably hurt them in retribution for past events. To protect his family, Zane adopts a big guard dog and engages in what Angel calls “hillbilly security”: placing junkyard metal around the trailer’s perimeter that will “make it noisy for an intruder to come near.” Zane’s girlfriend, Tiffany, assists in setting up a video and lighting security system. Along with these measures, Zane fights feelings of violence, which plagued him in the past, as they continue to ramp up. In this captivating tale, descriptions are often vivid and precise, such as that of a woman with spidery clots of mascara-laden eyelashes and a man whose “mouth pinched like he was sucking food out of his teeth.” But they can be clunky, too: “Hearing his current girlfriend’s name brought her face and smile into his mind.” Reading this series in order would be preferable, as incidents from the players’ brutal pasts are jarring to read in summarized sentences. Still, this gripping installment features a cast of intriguing characters and a memorable, complex hero. In addition, the tale is timely, with a reference to Covid-19 and pro and con stances on policing.
Like its characters, this mystery is engaging, compelling, and rough around the edges.Pub Date: March 21, 2023
ISBN: N/A
Page Count: 274
Publisher: Majestic Content Los Angeles
Review Posted Online: Jan. 16, 2023
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
A satisfying thriller that will warm the hearts of fans who already take comfort in hating the forces of evil.
Lt. Eve Dallas’ 63rd futuristic case is less a whodunit than a manhunt for an unusually sympathetic killer.
Thirteen years ago, way back in 2048, scientific genius Steve Redman—father of the Banner-Wyst corporation’s Rainmaker Project—narrowly escaped death in a gas explosion that killed his pregnant wife and infant son and 200 other residents of their New York City apartment building the night before he planned to report his suspicions about the company to the FBI. Now the bill is coming due for Banner-Wyst. The first death to be discovered is that of Lawrence Chu, Redman’s colleague and trusted friend, whose tenure as director of bioengineering science ends when he’s beaten to death. For quite a while, Dallas and her partner, Det. Delia Peabody, know less about this mystery than their readers do. But when Ezra Dent, a consultant to Banner-Wyst who worked with Redman and Chu back in the day, is murdered in exactly the same ferocious way, Dallas and Peabody, with help from Roarke, Dallas’ tech-billionaire husband, promptly put the pieces together and determine who they’re looking for. The search for Redman, who went AWOL from his hospital bed without a trace six years ago, has its own challenges. So does Dallas’ attempt to get cooperation from partners Calvin Banner and Jacob Wyst, who are clearly in the crosshairs of a killer who seems a lot less monstrous than they are. If the breaks in the case are suspiciously convenient in arriving, readers can pride themselves on taking sides against a mega-corporation whose self-avowed ecological saintliness is undermined by its leaders’ underhanded dealing.
A satisfying thriller that will warm the hearts of fans who already take comfort in hating the forces of evil.Pub Date: Sept. 8, 2026
ISBN: 9781250414564
Page Count: 368
Publisher: St. Martin's
Review Posted Online: May 18, 2026
Kirkus Reviews Issue: June 15, 2026
The delightful debut of a classic, prolific detective.
It takes a quirky sleuth to solve a baffling closed-door murder.
The author himself or, more accurately, some version of him, walks the reader through a “gruesome murder” that occurred in a rural farming village. At the center of the crime is the wealthy Ichiyanagi family, including the widow Itoko and her five children. The “heinous crime” occurs in the evening after the festive wedding of eldest son Kenzo to schoolteacher Katsuko. Yokomizo, part narrator and part raconteur, liberally shares digressions such as the fact that his favorite British author is A.A. Milne, who wrote The Red House Mystery as well as the books about Winnie-the-Pooh. Written in 1946 but set in 1937 before the devastation of World War II, this is the first novel featuring Kosuke Kindaichi, the legendary detective who appeared in more than 70 stories by Yokomizo. If Yokomizo is the Japanese Agatha Christie, Kindaichi may seem the Japanese Hercule Poirot—although actually, given his unkempt hair and apparently distracted manner, he’s more a cross between Poirot and Columbo. Shrewdly, his entrance is delayed until midway through the novel, after the police have stalled and both the family and the reader are anxious for a solution. The narrator’s garrulous charm, in a mystery long on logistics and forensic clues but short on detailed character portraits or extended interactions, is a key to the novel’s success, leavening the more intricate pieces of the puzzle. Armchair detectives will welcome the helpful character list that precedes the story.
The delightful debut of a classic, prolific detective.Pub Date: Sept. 15, 2026
ISBN: 9781805336549
Page Count: 192
Publisher: Pushkin Vertigo
Review Posted Online: July 20, 2026
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 15, 2026
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