More menace than mystery, but Nate’s return to Chicago restores him to his roots, moves this venerable series up to 1950,...
There’s no percentage in Nate Heller’s getting involved with Senator Estes Kefauver’s investigation of organized crime. He knows where too many bodies are buried; in fact, as he cheerfully notes, he’s buried some of them himself. So when Kefauver’s dog-and-pony show comes to Chicago, Heller exiles himself to the A-1 Detective Agency’s Los Angeles office—until a tumble with a wannabe starlet sends him back to the Windy City, where his old friend Bill Drury, who signed on as an A-1 op, has been helping the Kefauver Committee by borrowing the company’s equipment to spy on Al Capone’s surviving cousins, the Fischetti brothers. Despite their friendship, Heller cuts Drury loose in order to keep from falling off the tightrope between government lawyers who want him to testify and the Fischettis—dumb Joey, brutal model railroader Rocco, and slick patron of the arts Charley—who want him to take a powder. Disgusted by the sleazy tactics of Captain Dan (“Tubbo”) Gilbert, the genially crooked ex-investigator for the State’s Attorney who’s now running for Cook County Sheriff, Nate finally agrees to help Drury and his friend Marvin Bas, an attorney working for Tubbo’s clean-cut opponent, but his change of heart comes too late to save Drury or Bas or Jacky Payne, the discarded girlfriend of Rocky Fischetti Nate had befriended and bedded.
More menace than mystery, but Nate’s return to Chicago restores him to his roots, moves this venerable series up to 1950, and shows a deeper grasp of criminal history than most of Nate’s star-studded cases (Majic Man, 1999, etc.).Pub Date: June 1, 2001
ISBN: 0-451-20650-9
Page Count: 304
Publisher: NAL/Berkley
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 1, 2002
An anodyne visit with Tricia and her friends and enemies hung on a thin mystery.
Too much free time leads a New Hampshire bookseller into yet another case of murder.
Now that Tricia Miles has Pixie Poe and Mr. Everett practically running her bookstore, Haven’t Got a Clue, she finds herself at loose ends. Her wealthy sister, Angelica, who in the guise of Nigela Ricita has invested heavily in making Stoneham a bookish tourist attraction, is entering the amateur competition for the Great Booktown Bake-Off. So Tricia, who’s recently taken up baking as a hobby, decides to join her and spends a lot of time looking for the perfect cupcake recipe. A visit to another bookstore leaves Tricia witnessing a nasty argument between owner Joyce Widman and next-door neighbor Vera Olson over the trimming of tree branches that hang over Joyce’s yard—also overheard by new town police officer Cindy Pearson. After Tricia accepts Joyce’s offer of some produce from her garden, they find Vera skewered by a pitchfork, and when Police Chief Grant Baker arrives, Joyce is his obvious suspect. Ever since Tricia moved to Stoneham, the homicide rate has skyrocketed (Poisoned Pages, 2018, etc.), and her history with Baker is fraught. She’s also become suspicious about the activities at Pets-A-Plenty, the animal shelter where Vera was a dedicated volunteer. Tricia’s offered her expertise to the board, but president Toby Kingston has been less than welcoming. With nothing but baking on her calendar, Tricia has plenty of time to investigate both the murder and her vague suspicions about the shelter. Plenty of small-town friendships and rivalries emerge in her quest for the truth.
An anodyne visit with Tricia and her friends and enemies hung on a thin mystery.Pub Date: Aug. 13, 2019
ISBN: 978-1-9848-0272-9
Page Count: 320
Publisher: Berkley
Review Posted Online: May 26, 2019
Kirkus Reviews Issue: June 15, 2019
A murder is committed in a stalled transcontinental train in the Balkans, and every passenger has a watertight alibi. But Hercule Poirot finds a way.
**Note: This classic Agatha Christie mystery was originally published in England as Murder on the Orient Express, but in the United States as Murder in the Calais Coach. Kirkus reviewed the book in 1934 under the original US title, but we changed the title in our database to the now recognizable title Murder on the Orient Express. This is the only name now known for the book. The reason the US publisher, Dodd Mead, did not use the UK title in 1934 was to avoid confusion with the 1932 Graham Greene novel, Orient Express.
Pub Date: Feb. 28, 1934
ISBN: 978-0062073495
Page Count: -
Publisher: Dodd, Mead
Review Posted Online: Sept. 20, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 1, 1934
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