Robinson balances crime and romance, but her sharp heroine is the real prize.
A dowager marchioness’s daughter does her best to get her mama out of the pokey in 1925 London.
Things look bleak for Constance, Lady Broughton. Not that her affair with Edmund Moreton, fifth Duke of Rufford, was in any way illegal, both participants being well of age and widowed to boot. But the Duke’s death in a suite at the Ritz definitely was a crime since he was shot with a pistol. And since the pistol was Lady Broughton’s and the lady herself was found standing next to the body in a bloodstained peignoir, it’s hard to fault the police for locking her up, title and all. Her daughters, Lady Adelaide Compton and Lady Cecelia Merrill, appeal to the court to grant their mother bail, to no avail. So while Cee weeps and frets, Lady Adelaide does the only thing she can think of to secure her mother’s release: She launches a full-scale investigation to unmask the real culprit. Her probe depends on an odd assortment of characters: Beckett, Addie’s cinema-fanatic maid; Stephen Moreton, the murdered Duke’s grandson, who wishes to marry a Black American cabaret singer; and Graf Franz von Mayr, the estranged Austrian husband of the late Duke’s daughter. But the pick of the litter is DI Devenand Hunter, who takes a leave of absence from his job at Scotland Yard to help Lady Adelaide clear her mother’s name. Dev is a catch not only from the sleuthing perspective; he’s also handsome, witty, and a good dancer. Adelaide’s first priority is her mother’s release, but the plucky sleuth can’t help enjoying the chance to get up close and personal with dashing Dev.
Robinson balances crime and romance, but her sharp heroine is the real prize.Pub Date: Sept. 14, 2021
ISBN: 978-1-4642-1519-3
Page Count: 272
Publisher: Poisoned Pen
Review Posted Online: June 15, 2021
Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 1, 2021
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
Demands a careful reading and knowledge of the Victorian lady detective’s history.
A mystery that unwinds in reverse adds new twists to Thomas’ Sherlock Holmes–inspired series.
The new Charlotte Holmes novel continues the tense chess game that the gender-flipped Sherlock is playing with Moriarty and an incarcerated acquaintance turned villain. The events are narrated as a series of flashbacks interspersed with an interrogation in which Charlotte is under suspicion of murder. While her friend Inspector Treadles nervously observes, a senior policeman grills the unflappable detective about her recent movements. Even as she gives him a bland account of why she’s crisscrossed the English Channel in recent weeks, readers get drips of information about what she and her family and friends have been up to, all building to a reveal. Two other seemingly unrelated mystery subplots enter the picture, but it’s evident that new events and characters are connected to familiar ones from the past. With allusions to previous novels in the Lady Sherlock series and hat tips to Arthur Conan Doyle’s “The Final Problem” and the Guy Ritchie movie Sherlock Holmes: A Game of Shadows, the plot can be hard to follow, especially for new readers. The consistently well-drawn characters serve as an anchor, and the occasional glimpse of Charlotte’s love for her family and her lover, Lord Ingram Ashburton, adds a needed touch of warmth to the clever but clinical jigsaw structure of the mystery.
Demands a careful reading and knowledge of the Victorian lady detective’s history.Pub Date: June 25, 2024
ISBN: 9780593640432
Page Count: 352
Publisher: Berkley
Review Posted Online: April 20, 2024
Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 15, 2024
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
Forget the tangled backstory, focus on the game of cat and mouse, and enjoy.
Lt. Eve Dallas and her colleagues in the New York Police and Security Department step outside their comfort zone into counterterrorism.
Back in 2024, during the stressful time of the Urban Wars, a courageous band calling themselves The Twelve fought Dominion and other violent fringe groups that sought to end civilization as we know it, despite the presence of a traitor in their own midst. Now, 37 years later, someone’s killed Giovanni Rossi, a retired cybersecurity expert who was one of The Twelve, an hour or so after a summons—ostensibly from another veteran of the group—brought him from Rome to New York. On the body, officers called to the scene find a copy of Dallas’ business card that’s been embellished with a flamboyant threat to annihilate the seven surviving members of The Twelve. Obligingly inviting all seven to New York—a move you’d think would make it a lot easier for their nemesis to wipe them all out at once—Dallas soon forms a theory about the killer’s identity and sets a trap to draw him out. But her plan turns into a narrow miss, upping the stakes on both sides, for now the killer knows Dallas is on to him. It’s in the nature of the case that there’s less mystery and detection than usual in this long-running franchise—the biggest surprise turns out to be the connection between Dallas and her quarry—but the thrills keep on coming, and the final interrogation, though highly predictable in its broad outlines, is as satisfying as ever.
Forget the tangled backstory, focus on the game of cat and mouse, and enjoy.Pub Date: Feb. 4, 2025
ISBN: 9781250370792
Page Count: 368
Publisher: St. Martin's
Review Posted Online: Nov. 23, 2024
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 1, 2025
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