An entertaining whodunit with a razor-sharp, indelible cast and series potential.
A body turning up at a vast Pennsylvania estate ignites investigations from police and amateurs alike in this debut murder mystery.
Louise Jenkins agrees to host a local event at her centuries-old ancestral home. The Bucks County Historical Society’s annual house and garden tour draws a crowd of guests ready to mingle and sip bubbly. But the party comes to an abrupt end when someone stumbles on a body in the pantry. Neither Louise nor her three grown children know the victim, Michael Porter, who died from blunt force trauma. Cops tie the homicide to drugs and a later overdose. They’re convinced that Porter had been a dealer despite his fiancee’s insistence that he stayed away from drugs. Louise’s daughter Amelia Halliday certainly believes the detectives have missed something. She was an investigative reporter in Los Angeles before a relationship with one of her sources got her sacked. She’s now freelancing in her hometown and determined to solve the murder that happened in her mother’s house. Amelia isn’t the only amateur sleuth on the case; 11-year-old Winnie Miller, whose parents help manage Louise’s estate, scours for clues as well. This brilliant and animated tween’s impressive observational skills come in handy as she inches closer to the real culprit. In fact, she and Amelia seem to be making someone nervous, as they spot strangers following them. And since a handful of people have a possible involvement in Porter’s murder, along with a mounting pile of associated crimes, danger could spring from anywhere—even a familiar face.
The narrative’s leisurely pace echoes a cozy mystery, though Leonhauser’s story is a bit too edgy for that subgenre. Still, both of the gumshoes work at their own pace, and Amelia picks up most of her evidence simply from people approaching her with information. It’s nevertheless a delight to watch them slowly unravel the mystery. Winnie even puts items she finds in her “evidence box,” things that may or may not help unmask a killer. She’s just one member of a vibrant cast; there’s also Ruth Richards, Louise’s funny, sometimes cheeky lifelong best friend, as well as Tony Mardi, the good-natured chief detective who was Amelia’s college boyfriend. Intrigue colors the backstories, too, such as the missing man who briefly owned Louise’s estate, threw wild, extravagant parties, and promptly vanished a year ago. The author keeps the spotlight on the characters with a relatively simple mystery; readers get at least a few answers well before Amelia and Winnie do, and what’s left isn’t terribly hard to crack. But a few deductions aren’t convincing; one detective doesn’t think Porter’s place is “a drug dealer’s apartment” on account of the “secondhand” furniture and “worn, inexpensive” clothing brands. At the same time, it’s realistic that Amelia continually reworks or questions her ongoing theories. Occasional clues turn out to be red herrings—a murder-mystery staple. The final act of the tale, which could easily spawn a sequel, amps up suspense as one of the vivacious heroes finds herself in peril and a guilty baddie vows to get away scot-free.
An entertaining whodunit with a razor-sharp, indelible cast and series potential.Pub Date: May 31, 2023
ISBN: 9798987288108
Page Count: 446
Publisher: Twin Beeches Books
Review Posted Online: May 31, 2023
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
Forget about solving all these crimes; the signal triumph here is (spoiler) the heroine’s survival.
Another sweltering month in Charlotte, another boatload of mysteries past and present for overworked, overstressed forensic anthropologist Temperance Brennan.
A week after the night she chases but fails to catch a mysterious trespasser outside her town house, some unknown party texts Tempe four images of a corpse that looks as if it’s been chewed by wild hogs, because it has been. Showboat Medical Examiner Margot Heavner makes it clear that, breaking with her department’s earlier practice (The Bone Collection, 2016, etc.), she has no intention of calling in Tempe as a consultant and promptly identifies the faceless body herself as that of a young Asian man. Nettled by several errors in Heavner’s analysis, and even more by her willingness to share the gory details at a press conference, Tempe launches her own investigation, which is not so much off the books as against the books. Heavner isn’t exactly mollified when Tempe, aided by retired police detective Skinny Slidell and a host of experts, puts a name to the dead man. But the hints of other crimes Tempe’s identification uncovers, particularly crimes against children, spur her on to redouble her efforts despite the new M.E.’s splenetic outbursts. Before he died, it seems, Felix Vodyanov was linked to a passenger ferry that sank in 1994, an even earlier U.S. government project to research biological agents that could control human behavior, the hinky spiritual retreat Sparkling Waters, the dark web site DeepUnder, and the disappearances of at least four schoolchildren, two of whom have also turned up dead. And why on earth was Vodyanov carrying Tempe’s own contact information? The mounting evidence of ever more and ever worse skulduggery will pull Tempe deeper and deeper down what even she sees as a rabbit hole before she confronts a ringleader implicated in “Drugs. Fraud. Breaking and entering. Arson. Kidnapping. How does attempted murder sound?”
Forget about solving all these crimes; the signal triumph here is (spoiler) the heroine’s survival.Pub Date: March 17, 2020
ISBN: 978-1-9821-3888-2
Page Count: 352
Publisher: Scribner
Review Posted Online: Dec. 22, 2019
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 15, 2020
A vivid, exciting page-turner from one of our most interesting authors of historical fiction.
When a man accused of rape turns up dead, an Early American town seeks justice amid rumors and controversy.
Lawhon’s fifth work of historical fiction is inspired by the true story and diaries of midwife Martha Ballard of Hallowell, Maine, a character she brings to life brilliantly here. As Martha tells her patient in an opening chapter set in 1789, “You need not fear….In all my years attending women in childbirth, I have never lost a mother.” This track record grows in numerous compelling scenes of labor and delivery, particularly one in which Martha has to clean up after the mistakes of a pompous doctor educated at Harvard, one of her nemeses in a town that roils with gossip and disrespect for women’s abilities. Supposedly, the only time a midwife can testify in court is regarding paternity when a woman gives birth out of wedlock—but Martha also takes the witness stand in the rape case against a dead man named Joshua Burgess and his living friend Col. Joseph North, whose role as judge in local court proceedings has made the victim, Rebecca Foster, reluctant to make her complaint public. Further complications are numerous: North has control over the Ballard family's lease on their property; Rebecca is carrying the child of one of her rapists; Martha’s son was seen fighting with Joshua Burgess on the day of his death. Lawhon weaves all this into a richly satisfying drama that moves suspensefully between childbed, courtroom, and the banks of the Kennebec River. The undimmed romance between 40-something Martha and her husband, Ephraim, adds a racy flair to the proceedings. Knowing how rare the quality of their relationship is sharpens the intensity of Martha’s gaze as she watches the romantic lives of her grown children unfold. As she did with Nancy Wake in Code Name Hélène (2020), Lawhon creates a stirring portrait of a real-life heroine and, as in all her books, includes an endnote with detailed background.
A vivid, exciting page-turner from one of our most interesting authors of historical fiction.Pub Date: Dec. 5, 2023
ISBN: 9780385546874
Page Count: 448
Publisher: Doubleday
Review Posted Online: Aug. 12, 2023
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 15, 2023
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