A charming cozy with a believable sleuth and plenty of guilty-looking suspects.
Weddings can be murder.
Even though her sister, Maddie, is a close friend of Cissy Davison’s sister, Debbie, Silver Bear Shop manager Sasha Silverman regrets her agreement to be a substitute bridesmaid for Cissy’s wedding to Gus Antonini. The extravagant wedding plans of Cissy, a true bridezilla, get off to a bad start when most of the bridesmaids get drunk at the bachelorette party and Debbie bad-mouths the best man, Dylan Campbell, who dumped her just before their wedding. At the bachelor party, Dylan cleans the groomsmen out at the poker table, and a nasty fight ensues. Dylan causes quite a stir when he shows up drunk at the bachelorette party, making Sasha wonder whether several of the married bridesmaids may have succumbed to his charms. The rehearsal dinner makes it clear that Dylan has made a lot of enemies. So when Sasha and Maddie find him dead in the ladies’ room, the suspects are legion. Although the police warn Sasha away, she’s had plenty of experience with murder, and when Debbie, who’s become the prime suspect, begs her for help, she can’t refuse. Cissy is furious not only about postponing the wedding, but about the loss of the valuable diamond wedding rings her unruly poodle, Mr. Clooney, had been carrying in a bag around his neck. Sasha takes time from running the Silver Bear Shop and planning a fundraiser to snoop, discover another dead body, and attract the attention of a desperate killer.
A charming cozy with a believable sleuth and plenty of guilty-looking suspects.Pub Date: Dec. 29, 2020
ISBN: 978-1-4967-2915-6
Page Count: 336
Publisher: Kensington
Review Posted Online: Dec. 14, 2020
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 1, 2021
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
A gripping crime yarn from one of the best.
Third in a series—after A Thin Dark Line (1997) and The Boy (2018)—featuring a pair of married detectives in Louisiana.
A body lies on the bank of a bayou, his face and hands obliterated by a shotgun blast. He has no ID. Why, police wonder, didn’t the killer use any of the countless places one might dump the body forever in the alligator-infested swamps of the south Louisiana French Triangle? Then at the local sheriff’s office, B’Lynn Fontenot makes a frantic scene because no one will look for her missing adult son. But Det. Antoinette “Annie” Broussard listens with compassion and promises to investigate the young man’s fate, for better or worse. Is he the homicide victim? DNA testing will take time. Meanwhile, Annie muses that “B’Lynn could hold onto a sliver of hope, and the thing about slivers was that they were usually painful and often left a scar.” Then a second man is reported missing, and the Partout Parish sheriff’s office gets busy. A former high school football star had become hooked on painkillers years earlier after a 350-pound kid landed on him during practice. Was it an accident? That’s part of the gripping plot that opens a window into Cajun culture. Lt. Nick Fourcade leads a division of several detectives that includes Annie, who’s his wife. She’s just returned to work after having been badly hurt on the job, and he’d like her to take it easy. But “when trouble comes calling, you are seldom out of earshot,” he says. Nick and Annie are a well-matched pair both professionally and maritally, and they are decent, loyal, and tough. Spousal abuse, drug addiction, jealousy, and revenge cloud the lives of victims and suspects alike while characters like Nick pepper their dialogue with a Cajun patois: a fool is a couillon, a runt is a pischouette. Nick is far more endearing to Annie, whom he privately calls ‘Toinette. Hoag is a terrific crime writer, but readers have had to wait long stretches to catch up with Nick and Annie: It’s been six years since book no. 2 and it was 21 years before that. Maybe Hoag will lessen the gap next time. Anyway, the ending just might make a reader’s eyes well up. C’est vrai.
A gripping crime yarn from one of the best.Pub Date: Sept. 24, 2024
ISBN: 9781101985434
Page Count: 416
Publisher: Dutton
Review Posted Online: July 4, 2024
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 1, 2024
A smart and engaging literary thriller that bears down too hard on its themes.
At the home of an eccentric millionaire, a woman discovers out-of-the-ordinary events.
When her husband is invited to finish writing his book at the island home of a reclusive millionaire, Anna is relieved: If he sells it, they’ll be able to keep their Bronx apartment and she won’t have to go back to work at the laundry. It’s 1918, and Charles Fort—based on a real-life figure—is hard at work on a book about unexplained phenomena, such as objects falling from a clear sky: frogs, for example, or even bits of flesh, or blood. If Anna has doubts about the legitimacy of his research, she keeps them to herself. In any case, when the millionaire Claude Arkel offers the couple a place to stay for the winter, they eagerly accept. Almost immediately, though, things seem to be off. Arkel runs a school for wayward girls, and three students are missing. Meanwhile, there’s no sign of Arkel himself, and with the Spanish flu raging in the outside world, the Forts are stuck in quarantine. Bakis’ latest novel has the pacing and suspense of a smart literary thriller: It’s almost impossible to put down once you’ve started it. But Bakis can be heavy-handed in her treatment of the themes that undergird her story—in this case, women who support ambitious men. That’s not to say Bakis’ case doesn’t hold water, but she strikes the same note again and again in a way that is more repetitive than satisfying. So, for example, when the Forts first arrive on Arkel’s island, and Charles observes that the grand house is “modeled on the Château de Chambord in the Val de Loire” and Anna responds, “I know, I’m the one who showed you the article,” the mansplaining moment isn’t nearly as funny as it was apparently intended to be; it's just frustrating, in a teeth-grinding way.
A smart and engaging literary thriller that bears down too hard on its themes.Pub Date: Feb. 20, 2024
ISBN: 9781324093534
Page Count: 320
Publisher: Liveright/Norton
Review Posted Online: Nov. 4, 2023
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Dec. 1, 2023
BOOK REVIEW
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