A clever series kickoff featuring a sleuth who opens the often misunderstood world of autism to a wider audience.
A 24-year-old autistic woman displays a remarkable talent for detection in this novel by an autistic author.
Ada Latia built a cosmetic company that her ex-husband, the ironically named Rex Friendly, stole when he divorced her “eight months, two weeks, and three days ago,” marrying her best friend two months later. Now, forwarding her an article about the death of an autistic schoolgirl, Rex insults her by saying that autistic people aren’t really human. Despite her pain, Ada is drawn into the story by the accompanying picture showing a body that seems to be posed. The girl’s death has been called an accident, but Ada is sure that it’s murder. Her efforts to get the case reopened are fruitless until she leaves a message on the FBI public line. Then she gets an unexpected call from her schoolmate Henry Bloodstone, an FBI agent, who remembers both her quirks and her prodigious talents. Conversations with neurotypical people are always difficult for Ada, but she agrees to work as Henry’s unofficial consultant, and they travel to the victim’s school in Idaho to investigate. The child who died, Ella Kimball, came from a wealthy family, and her high-priced tuition was helping to support the school. At the time of her death, she was with one of the two autistic sons of the school director, Soledad Sanchez, who’s willing to let her son take the blame for an accidental death in order to save the school. Meeting Ella’s parents, especially her furious mother, is so traumatic for Ada that she goes into a meltdown. Interviewing everyone who works at the remote school, she and Henry find that Ellie was an extremely difficult child. But who wanted her dead? Despite the difficulty of the investigation for Ada, it will lead to life-changing events.
A clever series kickoff featuring a sleuth who opens the often misunderstood world of autism to a wider audience.Pub Date: Sept. 2, 2025
ISBN: 9781448316434
Page Count: 224
Publisher: Severn House
Review Posted Online: July 4, 2025
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 1, 2025
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
A satisfying thriller that will warm the hearts of fans who already take comfort in hating the forces of evil.
Lt. Eve Dallas’ 63rd futuristic case is less a whodunit than a manhunt for an unusually sympathetic killer.
Thirteen years ago, way back in 2048, scientific genius Steve Redman—father of the Banner-Wyst corporation’s Rainmaker Project—narrowly escaped death in a gas explosion that killed his pregnant wife and infant son and 200 other residents of their New York City apartment building the night before he planned to report his suspicions about the company to the FBI. Now the bill is coming due for Banner-Wyst. The first death to be discovered is that of Lawrence Chu, Redman’s colleague and trusted friend, whose tenure as director of bioengineering science ends when he’s beaten to death. For quite a while, Dallas and her partner, Det. Delia Peabody, know less about this mystery than their readers do. But when Ezra Dent, a consultant to Banner-Wyst who worked with Redman and Chu back in the day, is murdered in exactly the same ferocious way, Dallas and Peabody, with help from Roarke, Dallas’ tech-billionaire husband, promptly put the pieces together and determine who they’re looking for. The search for Redman, who went AWOL from his hospital bed without a trace six years ago, has its own challenges. So does Dallas’ attempt to get cooperation from partners Calvin Banner and Jacob Wyst, who are clearly in the crosshairs of a killer who seems a lot less monstrous than they are. If the breaks in the case are suspiciously convenient in arriving, readers can pride themselves on taking sides against a mega-corporation whose self-avowed ecological saintliness is undermined by its leaders’ underhanded dealing.
A satisfying thriller that will warm the hearts of fans who already take comfort in hating the forces of evil.Pub Date: Sept. 8, 2026
ISBN: 9781250414564
Page Count: 368
Publisher: St. Martin's
Review Posted Online: May 18, 2026
Kirkus Reviews Issue: June 15, 2026
The delightful debut of a classic, prolific detective.
It takes a quirky sleuth to solve a baffling closed-door murder.
The author himself or, more accurately, some version of him, walks the reader through a “gruesome murder” that occurred in a rural farming village. At the center of the crime is the wealthy Ichiyanagi family, including the widow Itoko and her five children. The “heinous crime” occurs in the evening after the festive wedding of eldest son Kenzo to schoolteacher Katsuko. Yokomizo, part narrator and part raconteur, liberally shares digressions such as the fact that his favorite British author is A.A. Milne, who wrote The Red House Mystery as well as the books about Winnie-the-Pooh. Written in 1946 but set in 1937 before the devastation of World War II, this is the first novel featuring Kosuke Kindaichi, the legendary detective who appeared in more than 70 stories by Yokomizo. If Yokomizo is the Japanese Agatha Christie, Kindaichi may seem the Japanese Hercule Poirot—although actually, given his unkempt hair and apparently distracted manner, he’s more a cross between Poirot and Columbo. Shrewdly, his entrance is delayed until midway through the novel, after the police have stalled and both the family and the reader are anxious for a solution. The narrator’s garrulous charm, in a mystery long on logistics and forensic clues but short on detailed character portraits or extended interactions, is a key to the novel’s success, leavening the more intricate pieces of the puzzle. Armchair detectives will welcome the helpful character list that precedes the story.
The delightful debut of a classic, prolific detective.Pub Date: Sept. 15, 2026
ISBN: 9781805336549
Page Count: 192
Publisher: Pushkin Vertigo
Review Posted Online: July 20, 2026
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 15, 2026
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
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