For readers who enjoy reminiscences of childhood in the British countryside and don't object to love-addled heroines.
McCluskey (Intrusion, 2016), who is equally at home in Los Angeles and rural England, works a few changes on the romantic mystery in her suspenseful second novel.
Advertising executive Alison, mildly dissatisfied with her marriage and job in southern California, finds an excuse to return to her British hometown when one of her childhood best friends, the rebellious Sophie, is found dead in a hotel room, presumably the victim of an accidental drug overdose. Back home, Alison meets up with another old friend, sophisticated Liz, and, more significantly, with Sophie's older brother, Matt, now married to a chilly Frenchwoman. Alison, who had a crush on Matt throughout her adolescence, finds one excuse after another to linger in England, ignoring her husband's phone calls, and Matt appears glad to spend time with her. Drawn to investigate the suspicious circumstances of Sophie's death, Alison talks to old friends and neighbors and interviews the residents and management at a shelter for abused women where Sophie briefly stayed while she was hiding out from drug dealers to whom she owed money. While readers are likely to guess before Alison does that Matt has some secret motives behind his new adoration of his sister's friend, various other members of the Savages, the old neighborhood gang of which Sophie and Matt were the ringleaders, complicate the mystery intriguingly. A strong sense of place and McCluskey's keen grasp of the ambivalence confronting an expatriate who is tempted to return to the dubious comforts of home keep the novel from seeming simply frothy. Though mystery fans may be put off by the unlikely courtroom drama that brings the novel to a climax, and the even more unlikely moments of enlightenment Alison experiences during this drama, she's a likable character, and it's easy to understand her self-delusion.
For readers who enjoy reminiscences of childhood in the British countryside and don't object to love-addled heroines.Pub Date: Jan. 30, 2018
ISBN: 978-1-5420-4632-9
Page Count: 254
Publisher: Little A
Review Posted Online: Oct. 30, 2017
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Nov. 15, 2017
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
Dark and unsettling, this novel’s end arrives abruptly even as readers are still moving at a breakneck speed.
Ten years after her teenage daughter went missing, a mother begins a new relationship only to discover she can't truly move on until she answers lingering questions about the past.
Laurel Mack’s life stopped in many ways the day her 15-year-old daughter, Ellie, left the house to study at the library and never returned. She drifted away from her other two children, Hanna and Jake, and eventually she and her husband, Paul, divorced. Ten years later, Ellie’s remains and her backpack are found, though the police are unable to determine the reasons for her disappearance and death. After Ellie’s funeral, Laurel begins a relationship with Floyd, a man she meets in a cafe. She's disarmed by Floyd’s charm, but when she meets his young daughter, Poppy, Laurel is startled by her resemblance to Ellie. As the novel progresses, Laurel becomes increasingly determined to learn what happened to Ellie, especially after discovering an odd connection between Poppy’s mother and her daughter even as her relationship with Floyd is becoming more serious. Jewell’s (I Found You, 2017, etc.) latest thriller moves at a brisk pace even as she plays with narrative structure: The book is split into three sections, including a first one which alternates chapters between the time of Ellie’s disappearance and the present and a second section that begins as Laurel and Floyd meet. Both of these sections primarily focus on Laurel. In the third section, Jewell alternates narrators and moments in time: The narrator switches to alternating first-person points of view (told by Poppy’s mother and Floyd) interspersed with third-person narration of Ellie’s experiences and Laurel’s discoveries in the present. All of these devices serve to build palpable tension, but the structure also contributes to how deeply disturbing the story becomes. At times, the characters and the emotional core of the events are almost obscured by such quick maneuvering through the weighty plot.
Dark and unsettling, this novel’s end arrives abruptly even as readers are still moving at a breakneck speed.Pub Date: April 24, 2018
ISBN: 978-1-5011-5464-5
Page Count: 368
Publisher: Atria
Review Posted Online: Feb. 5, 2018
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 15, 2018
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