A sharp, deftly plotted thriller by a promising new author.
Music and mayhem play out in the Vermont countryside in Lavine’s debut mystery.
Six months after the tragic death of his wife, Sam Thibeau is living a fairly uneventful life with his young son, Harry. They reside in a communelike neighborhood with several other families near hundreds of acres of Vermont wilderness. It’s a quiet life for Sam until he becomes aware of someone following him, whom he knows only as “Trapper Hat”; this person may be connected to mysterious clues and messages that lead Sam to actual buried treasure, in the form of diamonds, on his property. Sam begins digging up and selling the gems, and before long, a neighbor is murdered, Sam and Harry are threatened, and a dangerous Mexican cartel and Canadian drug syndicate become involved. At the same time, Sam, a concert-level pianist, is teaching a young woman named Sarah Patterson, who, after suffering a serious concussion, has gained an unusual musical gift. Amid all of this, Sam is falling for Cindy Yates, the police detective who’s investigating the murder and, eventually, the threats against Sam and Harry. All of this may seem like a lot for a reader to process, and it is, but in his debut novel, Lavine handles it all with a deft touch. One feels investment in the characters from the start, and the storytelling is well paced from beginning to end. The dialogue is crackling and skillful, and Lavine also has a gift for subtle, knowing humor, as in this tense passage, in which a police chase proceeds through a Trader Joe’s supermarket: “Rounding the end of the aisle, Miguel passed by a colorful display of seventeen different types of locally and organically produced yogurts.”
A sharp, deftly plotted thriller by a promising new author.Pub Date: Feb. 1, 2023
ISBN: 97982181101545
Page Count: 327
Publisher: Self
Review Posted Online: Dec. 30, 2022
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
BOOK REVIEW
PROFILES
A satisfying thriller that will warm the hearts of fans who already take comfort in hating the forces of evil.
Lt. Eve Dallas’ 63rd futuristic case is less a whodunit than a manhunt for an unusually sympathetic killer.
Thirteen years ago, way back in 2048, scientific genius Steve Redman—father of the Banner-Wyst corporation’s Rainmaker Project—narrowly escaped death in a gas explosion that killed his pregnant wife and infant son and 200 other residents of their New York City apartment building the night before he planned to report his suspicions about the company to the FBI. Now the bill is coming due for Banner-Wyst. The first death to be discovered is that of Lawrence Chu, Redman’s colleague and trusted friend, whose tenure as director of bioengineering science ends when he’s beaten to death. For quite a while, Dallas and her partner, Det. Delia Peabody, know less about this mystery than their readers do. But when Ezra Dent, a consultant to Banner-Wyst who worked with Redman and Chu back in the day, is murdered in exactly the same ferocious way, Dallas and Peabody, with help from Roarke, Dallas’ tech-billionaire husband, promptly put the pieces together and determine who they’re looking for. The search for Redman, who went AWOL from his hospital bed without a trace six years ago, has its own challenges. So does Dallas’ attempt to get cooperation from partners Calvin Banner and Jacob Wyst, who are clearly in the crosshairs of a killer who seems a lot less monstrous than they are. If the breaks in the case are suspiciously convenient in arriving, readers can pride themselves on taking sides against a mega-corporation whose self-avowed ecological saintliness is undermined by its leaders’ underhanded dealing.
A satisfying thriller that will warm the hearts of fans who already take comfort in hating the forces of evil.Pub Date: Sept. 8, 2026
ISBN: 9781250414564
Page Count: 368
Publisher: St. Martin's
Review Posted Online: May 18, 2026
Kirkus Reviews Issue: June 15, 2026
The delightful debut of a classic, prolific detective.
It takes a quirky sleuth to solve a baffling closed-door murder.
The author himself or, more accurately, some version of him, walks the reader through a “gruesome murder” that occurred in a rural farming village. At the center of the crime is the wealthy Ichiyanagi family, including the widow Itoko and her five children. The “heinous crime” occurs in the evening after the festive wedding of eldest son Kenzo to schoolteacher Katsuko. Yokomizo, part narrator and part raconteur, liberally shares digressions such as the fact that his favorite British author is A.A. Milne, who wrote The Red House Mystery as well as the books about Winnie-the-Pooh. Written in 1946 but set in 1937 before the devastation of World War II, this is the first novel featuring Kosuke Kindaichi, the legendary detective who appeared in more than 70 stories by Yokomizo. If Yokomizo is the Japanese Agatha Christie, Kindaichi may seem the Japanese Hercule Poirot—although actually, given his unkempt hair and apparently distracted manner, he’s more a cross between Poirot and Columbo. Shrewdly, his entrance is delayed until midway through the novel, after the police have stalled and both the family and the reader are anxious for a solution. The narrator’s garrulous charm, in a mystery long on logistics and forensic clues but short on detailed character portraits or extended interactions, is a key to the novel’s success, leavening the more intricate pieces of the puzzle. Armchair detectives will welcome the helpful character list that precedes the story.
The delightful debut of a classic, prolific detective.Pub Date: Sept. 15, 2026
ISBN: 9781805336549
Page Count: 192
Publisher: Pushkin Vertigo
Review Posted Online: July 20, 2026
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 15, 2026
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
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