A brawny debut so foursquare in its characters and prose that you can hardly wait till Shade finally gets to put those...
Having lost his wife to overwork, his job with the Chicago Police Department to politics, his ancient car to natural causes, and his girlfriend to LA, private eye Ron Shade is about to give up his office—why keep it when he has no walk-in clients?—when his old friend, social worker Maria Castro, walks in. Her buddy Juanita’s fiancé, Carlos Sanchez, has disappeared from his job at Two Thousand and One: Space Oddities, and since he’s a Salvadoran illegal, Juanita doesn’t want to go to the police. By the end of Shade’s first visit to the storage facility, it’s pretty obvious what’s happened to Carlos and who’s responsible. But it takes a long time for Shade to trace the spreading stain of fraud, payoffs, and cover-ups as far as it reaches for several reasons: He’s busy training for the championship kickboxing fight an earlier job injury robbed him of; the theft of his spiffy new Camaro Z-28 robs him of his wheels just when he thinks he’s got nothing left to lose; the clunker he borrows as a replacement needs mechanical work every time he puts the key in the ignition; and his sudden, unexpected romance with Maria makes every hour he’s not spending with her feel like he’s playing hooky. It isn’t long, though, before he learns that fate held worse things in store for Carlos than deportation.
A brawny debut so foursquare in its characters and prose that you can hardly wait till Shade finally gets to put those kickboxing skills to use.Pub Date: Oct. 1, 2002
ISBN: 0-7862-4309-0
Page Count: 256
Publisher: Five Star/Gale Cengage
Review Posted Online: June 24, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 15, 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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