As this entry in the Crime Files series opens, homicide detective Angel Cardoni (who seems to be in her mid-20s) is driving through a blizzard with her faithful dog, Miro. She swerves to avoid a deer in the road and ends up with her car nearly buried in a huge snowbank. Luckily, a nearby country inn is two days from opening for ski season, and Angel and Miro take refuge there at the invitation of the inn's award-winning French chef, Olive SoufflÇ. Angel's exhausted sleep is interrupted by the sound of screams; an employee and a delivery man have just found Olive's body on the floor of a walk-in freezer, surrounded by heads of cabbage. Although there's a dearth of evidence—no murder weapon, little blood, no hint of a struggle—and the medical examiner can't get there until the roads have been cleared, Angel resolves to find the killer. She does, in spite of numerous red herrings thrown in her path, and with enough brio to satisfy readers who figure out the mystery first; as Angel pursues her investigation with an ad hoc laboratory made up entirely of kitchen equipment, a variety of simple science lessons become clear. Despite the ages of the players (all adults, some middle-aged) and simplistic plotting, there is plenty to involve readers who like their mysteries fairly straightforward and refreshingly gore-free. (Fiction. 11-13)
Pub Date: Sept. 15, 1997
ISBN: 0-07-006310-9
Page Count: 132
Publisher: N/A
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 1, 1997
Paulsen recalls personal experiences that he incorporated into Hatchet (1987) and its three sequels, from savage attacks by moose and mosquitoes to watching helplessly as a heart-attack victim dies. As usual, his real adventures are every bit as vivid and hair-raising as those in his fiction, and he relates them with relish—discoursing on “The Fine Art of Wilderness Nutrition,” for instance: “Something that you would never consider eating, something completely repulsive and ugly and disgusting, something so gross it would make you vomit just looking at it, becomes absolutely delicious if you’re starving.” Specific examples follow, to prove that he knows whereof he writes. The author adds incidents from his Iditarod races, describes how he made, then learned to hunt with, bow and arrow, then closes with methods of cooking outdoors sans pots or pans. It’s a patchwork, but an entertaining one, and as likely to win him new fans as to answer questions from his old ones. (Autobiography. 10-13)
Pub Date: Feb. 1, 2001
ISBN: 0-385-32650-5
Page Count: 150
Publisher: Delacorte
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Dec. 15, 2000
Characteristically provocative gothic comedy, with sublime undertones.
An exhilarating summer marked by death, gore and fire sparks deep thoughts in a small-town lad not uncoincidentally named “Jack Gantos.”
The gore is all Jack’s, which to his continuing embarrassment “would spray out of my nose holes like dragon flames” whenever anything exciting or upsetting happens. And that would be on every other page, seemingly, as even though Jack’s feuding parents unite to ground him for the summer after several mishaps, he does get out. He mixes with the undertaker’s daughter, a band of Hell’s Angels out to exact fiery revenge for a member flattened in town by a truck and, especially, with arthritic neighbor Miss Volker, for whom he furnishes the “hired hands” that transcribe what becomes a series of impassioned obituaries for the local paper as elderly town residents suddenly begin passing on in rapid succession. Eventually the unusual body count draws the—justified, as it turns out—attention of the police. Ultimately, the obits and the many Landmark Books that Jack reads (this is 1962) in his hours of confinement all combine in his head to broaden his perspective about both history in general and the slow decline his own town is experiencing.
Characteristically provocative gothic comedy, with sublime undertones. (Autobiographical fiction. 11-13)Pub Date: Sept. 13, 2011
ISBN: 978-0-374-37993-3
Page Count: 352
Publisher: Farrar, Straus and Giroux
Review Posted Online: April 5, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 15, 2011
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