The sixth installment in Stanley’s franchise (A Death in the Family, 2015, etc.) is the best yet, with both an ingenious...
A detective with the Botswana CID tackles two baffling cases while managing his growing department and dealing with family issues.
An elderly Bushman found dead in the Kalahari is more of a nuisance than a mystery to Botswana DS Batwe Segodi. That is, until an autopsy reveals that the internal organs of the dead man place his age at about 40. Though the man died of a broken neck, the coroner also finds a bullet in his body, dating back several decades. Assistant Superintendent David Bengu, nicknamed Kubu (“hippo” in the Setswana language) for his size, has little patience for the paradoxical, but he does take notice when the corpse is stolen from the morgue in Gaborone, Botswana’s capital. Though thefts like this are not uncommon, usually to harvest organs, here the Bushman’s was the only corpse taken. Meanwhile, Kubu’s first female detective, Samantha Khama, is following up on the disappearance of famous witch doctor Botlele Ramala while also battling sexism in the department. For her part, Kubu’s wife, Joy, has little use for old-fashioned witch doctors. Kubu’s investigation of the Bushman takes him to a professor in Minnesota; Samantha finds blood evidence in a home in Gaborone. Could the two cases be related? An additional disappearance adds credence to this theory. On the home front, an illness rocks Kubu’s world.
The sixth installment in Stanley’s franchise (A Death in the Family, 2015, etc.) is the best yet, with both an ingenious mystery and a deeper and more textured depiction of modern Botswana and Kubu’s piece of it.Pub Date: Oct. 24, 2017
ISBN: 978-1-250-07090-6
Page Count: 320
Publisher: Minotaur
Review Posted Online: Aug. 5, 2017
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 15, 2017
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
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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