Two women solve an old mystery and find a new one in this uneven series entry.
Two friends of Native American ancestry, bonded by tragic events from their youth, continue on a path of discovery seeking truth, justice, and peace of mind in the fourth novella in Passel’s ongoing series.
This entry takes place in 2003, three decades after the events at the root of the first installment, Summer of Change (2017), in which young PerryAnn’s parents died in an accident; she and her friend MatiLou later investigated the event in their 20s. It picks up the story at a pivotal time as middle-aged PerryAnn and MatiLou work through the aftermath of the former’s past trauma and the latter contemplates difficult choices she faces in her own life. Narrated primarily through MatiLou’s thoughtful, introspective voice, the brief work—fewer than 40 pages in length—features strong themes of spirituality, forgiveness, and protecting the earth. The action, however, is mainly driven by PerryAnn’s search for answers that she hopes will provide her with closure; an old flame, Billy, who’s her daughter’s biological father, may have had something to do with her parent’s tragedy—and now he may be dying. MatiLou’s interest in ecological (wolf killings) and environmental concerns (oil drilling, land leasing), successfully adds another layer to her storyline, fills in aspects that are relevant to the environment in which the women live, and effectively connects to current issues of climate change. A third mystery subplot involving a community elder intersects with MatiLou’s desire to live a life that honors the beliefs that lie at the root of her marital discord. Two short lead-in paragraphs at the beginning of this installment briefly detail important plot points from PerryAnn’s past and describe MatiLou’s present concerns and state of mind; it’s important to highlight those early plot points, but they’re also repeated throughout the story, which can be frustrating; also, despite the recap, newcomers may find it difficult to get a sense of the community in which the main players live.
Two women solve an old mystery and find a new one in this uneven series entry.Pub Date: Dec. 12, 2022
ISBN: 9798368017341
Page Count: 58
Publisher: Self
Review Posted Online: Feb. 8, 2023
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
BOOK REVIEW
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 top-class cozy infused with dry wit and charming characters who draw you in and leave you wanting more, please.
Four residents of Coopers Chase, a British retirement village, compete with the police to solve a murder in this debut novel.
The Thursday Murder Club started out with a group of septuagenarians working on old murder cases culled from the files of club founder Elizabeth Best’s friend Penny Gray, a former police officer who's now comatose in the village's nursing home. Elizabeth used to have an unspecified job, possibly as a spy, that has left her with a large network of helpful sources. Joyce Meadowcroft is a former nurse who chronicles their deeds. Psychiatrist Ibrahim Arif and well-known political firebrand Ron Ritchie complete the group. They charm Police Constable Donna De Freitas, who, visiting to give a talk on safety at Coopers Chase, finds the residents sharp as tacks. Built with drug money on the grounds of a convent, Coopers Chase is a high-end development conceived by loathsome Ian Ventham and maintained by dangerous crook Tony Curran, who’s about to be fired and replaced with wary but willing Bogdan Jankowski. Ventham has big plans for the future—as soon as he’s removed the nuns' bodies from the cemetery. When Curran is murdered, DCI Chris Hudson gets the case, but Elizabeth uses her influence to get the ambitious De Freitas included, giving the Thursday Club a police source. What follows is a fascinating primer in detection as British TV personality Osman allows the members to use their diverse skills to solve a series of interconnected crimes.
A top-class cozy infused with dry wit and charming characters who draw you in and leave you wanting more, please.Pub Date: Sept. 22, 2020
ISBN: 978-1-98-488096-3
Page Count: 368
Publisher: Pamela Dorman/Viking
Review Posted Online: June 30, 2020
Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 15, 2020
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