of dozens down to reasonable size.
Murray’s second novel brings back plus-size p.i. Josephine Fuller (Larger Than Death, 1997), who lives in Seattle but does
most of her work for wheelchair-bound San Diego philanthropist Alicia Madrone, appraising the worthiness of her charity’s recipients. At the moment, Josephine, recovering from the death of her best friend Nina and struggling with her feelings for Nina’s lover Mulligan, welcomes a call from her patron. It seems that Sally Rhymer, Mrs. Madrone’s old friend, divorced from retired Admiral Ron Rhymer, is much concerned about her estranged daughter Amy, who’s involved with something called the Feather Heart Project that requires her to spend endless hours with dying people but still allows her enough time to keep her daughter Stephanie away from her grandmother. Mrs. Madrone’s able assistant Ambrose arranges for Josephine to meet Amy at the home of the Admiral’s son Dwight and wife Colleen. The Admiral is there too, in his usual drunken, wife-chasing form. It’s Colleen who later gets a call from the Admiral saying he’s been kidnaped, ransom demand to follow. What ensues, however, is murder most foul, when the Admiral’s friend Stewart Meade is found dead on Colleen’s kitchen floor, beginning a series of characters, incidents, and speculations so baroque and densely woven they defy description. Murray, who writes well and has an attractive heroine in Josephine, needs to prune back her lush plotting and bring a cast
of dozens down to reasonable size.Pub Date: April 1, 2000
ISBN: 0-312-25456-3
Page Count: 272
Publisher: Minotaur
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 1, 2000
An undisciplined but powerfully lacerating story, by an author who knows every block of the neighborhood and every hair on...
After five adventures for Boston shamus Patrick Kenzie and his off-again lover Angela Gennaro (Prayers for Rain, 1999, etc.), Lehane tries his hand at a crossover novel that’s as dark as any of Patrick’s cases.
Even the 1975 prologue is bleak. Sean Devine and Jimmy Marcus are playing, or fighting, outside Sean’s parents’ house in the Point neighborhood of East Buckingham when a car pulls up, one of the two men inside flashes a badge, and Sean and Jimmy’s friend Dave Boyle gets bundled inside, allegedly to be driven home to his mother for a scolding but actually to get kidnapped. Though Dave escapes after a few days, he never really outlives his ordeal, and 25 years later it’s Jimmy’s turn to join him in hell when his daughter Katie is shot and beaten to death in the wilds of Pen Park, and State Trooper Sean, just returned from suspension, gets assigned to the case. Sean knows that both Dave and Jimmy have been in more than their share of trouble in the past. And he’s got an especially close eye on Jimmy, whose marriage brought him close to the aptly named Savage family and who’s done hard time for robbery. It would be just like Jimmy, Sean knows, to ignore his friend’s official efforts and go after the killer himself. But Sean would be a lot more worried if he knew what Dave’s wife Celeste knows: that hours after catching sight of Katie in the last bar she visited on the night of her death, Dave staggered home covered with somebody else’s blood. Burrowing deep into his three sorry heroes and the hundred ties that bind them unbearably close, Lehane weaves such a spellbinding tale that it’s easy to overlook the ramshackle mystery behind it all.
An undisciplined but powerfully lacerating story, by an author who knows every block of the neighborhood and every hair on his characters’ heads.Pub Date: Jan. 30, 2001
ISBN: 0-688-16316-5
Page Count: 416
Publisher: Morrow/HarperCollins
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Dec. 15, 2000
This ran in the S.E.P. and resulted in more demands for the story in book form than ever recorded. Well, here it is and it is a honey. Imagine ten people, not knowing each other, not knowing why they were invited on a certain island house-party, not knowing their hosts. Then imagine them dead, one by one, until none remained alive, nor any clue to the murderer. Grand suspense, a unique trick, expertly handled.
Pub Date: Feb. 21, 1939
ISBN: 0062073478
Page Count: 272
Publisher: Dodd, Mead
Review Posted Online: Sept. 20, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 1, 1939
SEEN & HEARD
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