An amiable cozy that should delight the Asheville Visitors Bureau.
Could music be the key to the mystery of a young activist’s murder?
At the season opener for the Asheville Tourists baseball team, private investigator Sam Blackman and attorney Hewitt Donaldson witness a bitter confrontation between contractor Ken Stokes and Luke Kirkpatrick of the Kirkgate Paper company. Ken accuses Luke of excluding Wilma Dykeman, beloved local author and conservationist, from the upcoming Asheville Luminaries Festival, which is sponsored by Kirkgate Paper—the same company Wilma accused of polluting the Pigeon River. A few days later, Nakayla Robertson, Sam's partner in life and work, gets a worried phone call from Ken’s pregnant wife, Lynne; Ken hasn't come home, and Lynne thinks he might have been collecting water samples for the River Watchers, for whom he monitors toxin levels. Sam and Nakayla head down to the river to look for Ken only to find his dead body. Soon after Sam tells Lynne he'll investigate Ken's death, he gets a visit from Ted Kirkpatrick, Luke's father, who wants Sam to probe the crime in order to clear the Kirkpatrick family of suspicion. Paul Clarkson, a Moog synthesizer expert and fellow River Watcher, provides info about both pollution and the Luminaries Festival, whose headliner, temperamental musician William Ormandy, happens to be Ted’s alibi. Through seven previous cases, the author has developed an easy rapport between recurring characters. Though his front-loading of suspects and incidents causes the story to sag a bit in the middle, a death threat and a suspicious package complicate the case smartly.
An amiable cozy that should delight the Asheville Visitors Bureau.Pub Date: March 2, 2021
ISBN: 978-1-4642-1315-1
Page Count: 272
Publisher: Poisoned Pen
Review Posted Online: Dec. 25, 2020
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 15, 2021
It's hard to read but hard to look away from.
When two women who share a birthday meet, a journalist becomes the subject of her own true-crime mystery.
On their 45th birthdays, Josie Fair and Alix Summer meet at a pub and discover they were born not only on the same day, but in the same hospital. Alix is a successful journalist, and Josie convinces Alix that her story is worth telling: Josie met her husband when she was 13 and he was 40. “I can see that maybe I was being used, that maybe I was even being groomed?” she confesses to Alix. “But that feeling of being powerful, right at the start, when I was still in control. I miss that sometimes. I really do. And what I’d like, more than anything, is to get it back.” From this premise Alix creates a Netflix series, Hi! I’m Your Birthday Twin! which investigates Josie’s life as she reconciles what happened to her as a teen and seeks a new path. With the story unfinished, the narrative unfolds in the present tense, with prose that jingles like song lyrics: “He turns to see if the girl is behind him, and sees her wishy-washy, wavy-wavy, in double vision through the glass windows of the hotel.” Alix is both intrigued and repulsed by Josie, but she initially gives her the benefit of the doubt. After all, Alix’s husband, Nathan, has a drinking problem, and Alix knows what it’s like to be reluctant to leave a bad situation. But Josie seems more interested in being part of Alix’s seemingly glamorous life than she is in fixing her own, and when three people end up dead and Alix’s life is turned upside down, the evidence points to Josie—and turns the TV series into a murder mystery. Transcripts from Alix’s interviews alternate with the narrative, offering increasingly varied perspectives on Josie’s story as told by her neighbors, friends, and family members. With so many versions of events, the ending shatters, leaving readers to decide whose is the truth.
It's hard to read but hard to look away from.Pub Date: Aug. 8, 2023
ISBN: 9781982179007
Page Count: 384
Publisher: Atria
Review Posted Online: May 24, 2023
Kirkus Reviews Issue: June 15, 2023
A tale that’s hard to believe but easy to swallow in a single gulp.
A bear is hunting prey in Wyoming’s Bighorns. And not just any bear.
It’s bad enough that Clay Hutmacher, who manages the Double Diamond Ranch, has lost his son, Clay Jr., to a vicious attack by a grizzly bear. What’s much worse is that Clay Jr.—who’d been about to pop the question to game warden Joe Pickett’s daughter, Sheridan—is only the first of the victims over an exceptionally broad geographical area. Marshal Marvin Bertignolli is clawed and bitten to death over in Hanna. Sgt. Ryan Winner is found bleeding out north of Rawlins. Former Twelve Sleep County prosecutor Dulcie Schalk, one of two survivors of an ambush, doesn’t survive her final encounter. The four experts chosen to kill the grizzly rope Joe into their expedition, but since their quarry keeps turning up far from the last sighting, the most meaningful confrontation the Predator Attack Team has is with a pair of Mama Bears, animal rights activists who demand due process for Tisiphone, as they’ve dubbed the presumed killer. Box, who’s far too canny to leave Tisiphone alone on center stage, follows Joe’s old antagonist Dallas Cates as the ex–rodeo star is released from prison and embarks on his revenge tour, which takes him to Lee Ogburn-Russell, an inventor whose life Dallas saved, and Axel Soledad, a correspondent who shares so many enemies with Dallas that he suggests they go after them together. Franchise fans will appreciate new details about Joe’s complicated family, the obligatory high-country landscapes, and yet another corrupt law enforcer.
A tale that’s hard to believe but easy to swallow in a single gulp.Pub Date: Feb. 27, 2024
ISBN: 9780593331347
Page Count: 384
Publisher: Putnam
Review Posted Online: Jan. 5, 2024
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 1, 2024
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