Intrepid, compassionate sleuths unravel a tangle of cold-blooded crimes.
Brutal acts and baffling mysteries threaten the peace of an idyllic mountain community.
Colorado deputy sheriff Mattie Wray and her sister, Julia, have ventured south to the Mexican village of Pueblo del Sol to visit their mother, Ramona. Given Mattie’s pending wedding to veterinarian Cole Walker, this should be a celebratory occasion, but it turns tense when Ramona’s friends greet her suspiciously and explain that their mother is missing along with her husband, Juan Martinez. Could the unsolved murder of Mattie’s felonious father decades ago be connected to Ramona’s disappearance? When Mattie gets back on the job, a missing person report sends her, with K-9 sidekick Robo and her friend Stella LoSasso, a detective in the local sheriff’s office, into the Colorado pine forest, where they make a horrifying discovery: Juan’s corpse, roped to a tree. Someone has apparently followed Mattie north from Mexico with vengeance on their mind. On the heels of this bizarre crime, Cole discovers another: the apparent poisoning of several horses. The eighth entry in Mizushima’s series is distinctive as ever in its authentic Western flavor and its affection for animals. Robo is an integral part of an investigative team, ferreting out valuable evidence, and the poignant equine mystery is a major plot thread. After Mattie receives a creepy letter from someone identifying themselves as “a friend of your father’s” that confirms a connection to Ramona’s disappearance, more twists and dangers await. Though Mizushima front-loads her tale with multiple backstories, an abundance of supporting characters, and a handful of mysteries, her lucid prose and caring cast should again captivate readers, new and old, and keep them engaged in the complex mystery.
Intrepid, compassionate sleuths unravel a tangle of cold-blooded crimes.Pub Date: March 7, 2023
ISBN: 9781639102440
Page Count: 288
Publisher: Crooked Lane
Review Posted Online: Dec. 23, 2022
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 15, 2023
Recommended reading for every paranoid suburbanite who’s considering a move to the city, or to the Arctic wilds.
Character assassination reigns supreme, if not uncontested, in a Long Island suburb.
April Masterson loves her husband, corporate attorney Elliott; their 7-year-old, Bobby; and her YouTube channel, “April’s Sweet Secrets.” What she doesn’t love is whoever’s texting her warnings about how Bobby isn’t really in their backyard while she’s busy filming her videos or withering critiques of her baking show or veiled accusations about her past and threats about her present. Her best friend, former prosecutor Julie Bressler, may be bossy and opinionated, but surely she’d never turn on April this way. Who else might know enough to send April goodies like a picture of her kissing Mark Tanner, Bobby’s soccer coach? Though April struggles to get Elliot to take her ordeal seriously, even when she shows up at his office for a lunch date, he’s protected by his receptionist, Brianna Anderson, whose attachment to her boss goes far beyond loyalty. Then Julie turns on her; Maria Cooper, her friendly new next-door neighbor, turns on her; and in the most mind-boggling scene, Doris Kirkland, April’s mother, whose dementia has brought her to a nursing home, turns on her. McFadden releases an escalating series of toxins so deftly into the suburban atmosphere that it’s practically an anticlimax when someone gets killed and April instantly becomes the prime suspect. But that’s only a setup for the tale’s boldest move: switching its narrator from April to a fair-weather friend who frames the whole nightmare in dramatically different terms. As a special gift to her savviest fans, the author throws in an even more jolting epilogue that’s as hard to forget as it is to believe.
Recommended reading for every paranoid suburbanite who’s considering a move to the city, or to the Arctic wilds.Pub Date: March 3, 2026
ISBN: 9781464249600
Page Count: 368
Publisher: Poisoned Pen
Review Posted Online: Dec. 6, 2025
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 15, 2026
Another gem from Lippman, with a heroine who elevates being ordinary to an art form.
An ordinary woman finds extraordinary adventures on a river cruise on the Seine.
Muriel Blossom acknowledges that she’s a “no-frills” person, a trait that served her well when doing surveillance for Baltimore PI Tess Monaghan. When she gets an unexpected upgrade on her British Airways flight to Paris, she finds herself not only in business class, but on the other side of the looking glass. Allan Turner, a handsome stranger, befriends her in the Chesapeake Lounge, which her upgrade allows her to access. She misses her connection at Heathrow because of the weather, so he invites her to share his luxurious suite in a London hotel, paid for, he insists, by his firm. Then he sends her off on the Eurostar train to reach Paris via the Chunnel in time for her ship’s departure. Once in Paris, she meets another stranger, younger but equally attentive. Danny Johnson takes her to a friend’s atelier in the Marais where the plus-sized Muriel can find the fashionable clothing she deserves. A mysterious man in a bellman uniform knocks on her hotel-room door and invites her to leave her luggage in the hallway so it can be transferred overnight to her ship, but of course she realizes that’s nonsense. She also receives the news that Allan died in a fall from his balcony the night after she left London. When Danny turns up on her cruise, she knows something’s off, but she can’t put together the pieces. That’s because Lippman is unrivaled in her ability to lay out clues in a way that makes them seem not only mysterious, but downright surreal. Only at the end does everything fit together so naturally that it all seems blazingly obvious. Like Muriel, who’s patient and sensible to the end, you’ll just have to wait.
Another gem from Lippman, with a heroine who elevates being ordinary to an art form.Pub Date: June 17, 2025
ISBN: 9780062998101
Page Count: 272
Publisher: Morrow/HarperCollins
Review Posted Online: July 4, 2025
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 1, 2025
PERSPECTIVES
© Copyright 2026 Kirkus Media LLC. All Rights Reserved.
Follow
Popular in this Genre
We can’t wait for you to join Kirkus!
It’s free and takes less than 10 seconds!
Already have an account? Log in.
OR
Sign in with GoogleTrouble signing in? Retrieve credentials.
Welcome Back!
OR
Sign in with GoogleTrouble signing in? Retrieve credentials.
