A droll portrait of “a town where almost everything and everyone was for sale,” with felonies obbligato.
Minneapolis investigator Nils Shapiro heads west for fun, sun, and murder.
Beverly Mayer is used to getting what she wants, and what she wants from Nils is that he fly to Los Angeles and see if the sudden death of her grandson Ebben’s fiancee has jolted him into frittering away any more of his $50 million trust fund. Arriving in La La Land with Jameson White, the nurse practitioner he’s been nursing over a nervous breakdown, in time for Juliana Marquez’s memorial service, Nils learns that Ebben has used $1 million in seed money to persuade other investors to pony up the much larger sum needed to launch The Creative Collective, a cooperative that aims to fund artists without diverting any money to agents, producers, executives, or other bloodsuckers. By the time he’s persuaded himself that Ebben is displaying admirable moral and financial responsibility, Nils has already satisfied himself that Juliana was murdered, slipped a lethal dose of caffeine very likely intended for her intended. As one-eyed Russian stalker Vasily Zaytzev hovers menacingly in the background, Nils finds himself in the middle of a hilarious pitch meeting with Ebben’s current team—screenwriter Brit Dawsey, line producer Thom Burke, manager Debra Schmidt, and one-named agent Sebastiano—that could have come straight out of Get Shorty. Declining Ebben’s tearful request for him to stay in town and watch over him, Nils jets back to Minnesota to report to Beverly that she has nothing to fear except her grandson’s sudden death, but the urgent report of a second murder drags him back to hunker down until he ties up all the loose ends. Well, maybe not quite all of them.
A droll portrait of “a town where almost everything and everyone was for sale,” with felonies obbligato.Pub Date: June 2, 2020
ISBN: 978-1-250-19134-2
Page Count: 320
Publisher: Forge
Review Posted Online: March 1, 2020
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 15, 2020
A treat for aficionados of shopkeeper-sleuth cozies.
Notch another corpse for Jacobia “Jake” Tiptree (Death by Chocolate Malted Milkshake, 2019, etc.).
After slowly working its way out of the red, Jake’s sweet shop is now one of the linchpins of the revitalized business district of Eastport, Maine. But she and her partner, Ellie White, are less than thrilled when Henry Hadlyme, star of the food tourism show Eat This! offers to include The Chocolate Moose on his podcast Eating on the Edge! which highlights off-the-beaten-track purveyors of New England fare. Hadlyme seems a little slimy to Jake and Ellie, and his interest in their treats seems less than sincere. But when he calls Jake “missy,” that’s it; the two chocolateers boot him out of their shop. He comes back with a vengeance—or at least, his corpse does. It turns up in the basement of the Moose with a stuffed parrot pinned to its shoulder and a cutlass jabbed through its chest in a gruesome nod to the ongoing Eastport Pirate Festival. Jake would love to present police chief Bob Arnold with a convenient alternative to charging her with Hadlyme’s murder. And there’s no dearth of suspects: A surreptitious trip to the Eat This! production trailer lets Jake know that pretty much everyone involved with the show hated Hadlyme. But finding out exactly who croaked the curmudgeon—and offering the chief some proof—proves to be a challenge to Jake’s and Ellie’s ingenuity, health, and welfare.
A treat for aficionados of shopkeeper-sleuth cozies.Pub Date: Feb. 25, 2020
ISBN: 978-1-4967-1134-2
Page Count: 240
Publisher: Kensington
Review Posted Online: Nov. 23, 2019
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Dec. 15, 2019
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
An expert juggling act that ends with not one but two intercut trials. More, please.
His Clifton Chronicles (This Was a Man, 2017, etc.) complete, the indefatigable Archer launches a new series that follows a well-born police officer from his first assignment to (spoiler alert) his appointment as commissioner of the Metropolitan Police some volumes down the road.
William Warwick may have been born with a silver spoon in his mouth, but he’s done everything he can to declare his independence from his father, Sir Julian Warwick QC. When William, fresh out of King’s College with a degree in art history, announces his intention to enroll in Hendon Police College, his father realizes that he’ll have to count on William’s older sister, Grace, to carry on the family’s tradition in Her Majesty’s courts. Instead, guileless William patrols the streets of Lambeth until a chance remark lands him on DCI Bruce Lamont’s Art and Antiques unit under the watchful eye of Cmdr. Jack Hawksby. No fewer than four cases await his attention: the forger who signs first editions with the names of their famous authors; a series of even more accomplished forgeries of old masters paintings; a well-organized series of thefts of artworks by a gang whose leader prefers selling them back to the companies who’ve insured them and often don’t even report the thefts to the police; and a mysterious series of purchases of century-old silver by one Kevin Carter. His investigations take William across the path, and then into the bed, of Beth Rainsford, a research assistant at the Fitzmolean gallery, still reeling seven years after a priceless Rembrandt was stolen from its collection, most likely by landowner and self-styled farmer Miles Faulkner. As if to prevent William from getting even a moment’s sleep in between rounds of detection and decorous coupling, Beth unwillingly drags William into a fifth case, a 2-year-old murder whose verdict she has every reason to doubt. One of these cases will bring William up against Grace, whose withering cross-examination of him on the witness stand is a special highlight.
An expert juggling act that ends with not one but two intercut trials. More, please.Pub Date: Sept. 3, 2019
ISBN: 978-1-250-20076-1
Page Count: 336
Publisher: St. Martin's
Review Posted Online: June 16, 2019
Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 1, 2019
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