Worst feature: too many similar plot twists. Best: the sharply characteristic voices that emerge from all these tales.
An anthology celebrating 21 years of writing by Northern England’s Murder Squad with 21 stories, eight of them new.
The celebration is largely a private affair, with long-standing members Ann Cleeves, Kate Ellis, Margaret Murphy, Chris Simms, Cath Staincliffe, and editor Edwards contributing three entries apiece. Of the remaining stories by former Squad members, John Baker’s “An Old-Fashioned Poisoning” shows a Victorian woman celebrating the passing of Alfred, Lord Tennyson, by arranging another death; the police officer in Chaz Brenchley’s “For Kicks” uncovers a lifelong pattern of abuse in the case of a teenager kicked into a coma; and the thrill killer in the late Stuart Pawson’s “Ultra Violent” is brought to justice by a highly predictable mistake. None of these outliers can match the best stories by the current Squad members. In Staincliffe’s “Scorpion,” another abused teenager strikes back at a shockingly unexpected target. “A Winter’s Tale” is Cleeves’ routine but expert probe into the murder of a rural woman with a reputation. The gangster’s widow in Edwards’ “The Other Life” comes home from a séance arranged by her cleaning lady to find that two of her late husband’s colleagues have targeted her home for robbery. The officer who solves the locked-room poisoning in Ellis’ “My Oleander” wastes no time in applying the lessons he’s learned on the homefront. Simms’ “Gaffed” follows a high-stakes meeting between an informant whose wife’s death freed him from a gang’s blackmail and the officer who’s promised him protection to its logical conclusion. And a pair of hospital patients battling formidable handicaps in Murphy’s “Still Life” turn to battle each other till they work toward a resolution as welcome as it is unlikely.
Worst feature: too many similar plot twists. Best: the sharply characteristic voices that emerge from all these tales.Pub Date: Nov. 2, 2021
ISBN: 978-0-7278-9093-1
Page Count: 240
Publisher: Severn House
Review Posted Online: Aug. 17, 2021
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 1, 2021
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
Don’t feel that your current news feed is disturbing enough? Penny has just what you need.
A sequel to The Grey Wolf (2024) that begins with the earlier novel’s last line: “We have a problem.” And what a problem it is.
Now that Chief Inspector Armand Gamache and his allies in and out of the Sûreté du Québec have saved Canada’s water supply from poisoning on a grand scale, you might think they were entitled to some rest and relaxation in Three Pines. No such luck. Don Joseph Moretti, the Sixth Family head who ordered the hit-and-run on biologist Charles Langlois that nearly killed Gamache as well, is plotting still more criminal enterprises, and Gamache can’t be sure that Chief Inspector Evelyn Tardiff, who’s been cozying up to Moretti in order to get the goods on him, hasn’t gone over to the dark side herself. In fact, Gamache’s uncertainty about Evelyn sets the pattern for much of what follows, for another review of one of Langlois’ notebooks reveals a plot so monstrous that it’s impossible to be sure who’s not in on it. Is it really true, as paranoid online rumors have it, that “Canada is about to attack the U.S.”? Or is it really the other way around, as the discovery of War Plan Red would have it? As the threats loom larger and larger, they raise questions as to whether the Black Wolf, the evil power behind them, is Moretti, disgraced former Deputy Prime Minister Marcus Lauzon, whom Gamache has arranged to have released from prison, or someone even more highly placed. A brief introductory note dating Penny’s delivery of the uncannily prophetic manuscript to September 2024 will do little to assuage the anxieties of concerned readers.
Don’t feel that your current news feed is disturbing enough? Penny has just what you need.Pub Date: Oct. 28, 2025
ISBN: 9781250328175
Page Count: 384
Publisher: Minotaur
Review Posted Online: July 17, 2025
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 15, 2025
© Copyright 2025 Kirkus Media LLC. All Rights Reserved.
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