A pleasant, escapist diversion.
In this third series installment, a newly engaged couple from 1930s Chicago visits blue-blooded relations in England.
Now that they’ve been fully welcomed into upper-class life, Henrietta Von Harmon and Clive Howard have a multitude of duties to attend to. First, of course, there’s their upcoming wedding—a lavish affair that will host their families, friends, and all of Clive’s parents’ upper-crust set. This is complicated by Henrietta’s grandfather Oldrich Exley, a man who has grand plans for his daughter Martha (Henrietta’s mother) and her brood. He also insists on walking Henrietta down the aisle at her wedding even though she’s promised her dear friend Mr. Hennessey that honor. Henrietta and Clive must figure out when to follow their hearts and when to give in to their class-conscious elders’ expectations. Meanwhile, Henrietta’s sister, Elsie, quickly becomes entangled with two men: steadfast but uninspiring (and oddly unsolicitous) Stan and the dashing Lt. Harrison Barnes-Smith, a man who’s shown interest in her but has a reputation as a scoundrel. After their wedding, the Howards head to England, where Clive’s uncle and aunt hold court at a crumbling but grand manse, Castle Linley. There, between dinner parties with aristocrats, they get wrapped up in another sordid case when a man is found robbed and murdered outside a pub, and the main culprit is Clive’s brooding cousin Wallace. Cox’s (A Ring of Truth, 2017, etc.) latest novel suffers from odd pacing, like its predecessor; the beginning drags, recapping the events between the last book and this one for many pages before any present action happens. The ending, by contrast, accelerates startlingly quickly, setting the stage for another series entry. However, Cox’s eye for historical detail remains sharp, and England through the Americans’ eyes is delightful, especially when relating the feeling of a country subdued after World War I: “Henrietta had observed that everything in England had an air of tradition and heavy formality to it, a quiet mutedness that pervaded all, like a painting so old that some of the color had leached out or faded.…Highbury, by comparison, was much more…dazzling. Brighter somehow.”
A pleasant, escapist diversion.Pub Date: April 24, 2018
ISBN: 978-1-63152-373-1
Page Count: -
Publisher: She Writes Press
Review Posted Online: Jan. 30, 2018
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
Irritatingly trite woman-in-periler from lawyer-turned-novelist Baldacci. Moving away from the White House and the white-shoe Washington law firms of his previous bestsellers (Absolute Power, 1996; Total Control, 1997), Baldacci comes up with LuAnn Tyler, a spunky, impossibly beautiful, white-trash truck stop waitress with a no-good husband and a terminally cute infant daughter in tow. Some months after the birth of Lisa, LuAnn gets a phone call summoning her to a make-shift office in an unrented storefront of the local shopping mall. There, she gets a Faustian offer from a Mr. Jackson, a monomaniacal, cross-dressing manipulator who apparently knows the winning numbers in the national lottery before the numbers are drawn. It seems that LuAnn fits the media profile of what a lottery winner should be—poor, undereducated but proud—and if she's willing to buy the right ticket at the right time and transfer most of her winnings to Jackson, she'll be able to retire in luxury. Jackson fails to inform her, however, that if she refuses his offer, he'll have her killed. Before that can happen, as luck would have it, LuAnn barely escapes death when one of husband Duane's drug deals goes bad. She hops on a first-class Amtrak sleeper to Manhattan with a hired executioner in pursuit. But executioner Charlie, one of Jackson's paid handlers, can't help but hear wedding bells when he sees LuAnn cooing with her daughter. Alas, a winning $100- million lottery drawing complicates things. Jackson spirits LuAnn and Lisa away to Sweden, with Charlie in pursuit. Never fear. Not only will LuAnn escape a series of increasingly violent predicaments, but she'll also outwit Jackson, pay an enormous tax bill to the IRS, and have enough left over to honeymoon in Switzerland. Too preposterous to work as feminine wish-fulfillment, too formulaic to be suspenseful. (Book-of-the-Month Club main selection)
Pub Date: Dec. 2, 1997
ISBN: 0-446-52259-7
Page Count: 528
Publisher: N/A
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Oct. 15, 1997
A suspenseful, professional-grade north country procedural whose heroine, a deft mix of compassion and attitude, would be...
Box takes another break from his highly successful Joe Pickett series (Stone Cold, 2014, etc.) for a stand-alone about a police detective, a developmentally delayed boy, and a package everyone in North Dakota wants to grab.
Cassandra Dewell can’t leave Montana’s Lewis and Clark County fast enough for her new job as chief investigator for Jon Kirkbride, sheriff of Bakken County. She leaves behind no memories worth keeping: her husband is dead, her boss has made no bones about disliking her, and she’s looking forward to new responsibilities and the higher salary underwritten by North Dakota’s sudden oil boom. But Bakken County has its own issues. For one thing, it’s cold—a whole lot colder than the coldest weather Cassie’s ever imagined. For another, the job she turns out to have been hired for—leading an investigation her new boss doesn’t feel he can entrust to his own force—makes her queasy. The biggest problem, though, is one she doesn’t know about until it slaps her in the face. A fatal car accident that was anything but accidental has jarred loose a stash of methamphetamines and cash that’s become the center of a battle between the Sons of Freedom, Bakken County’s traditional drug sellers, and MS-13, the Salvadorian upstarts who are muscling in on their territory. It’s a setup that leaves scant room for law enforcement officers or for Kyle Westergaard, the 12-year-old paperboy damaged since birth by fetal alcohol syndrome, who’s walked away from the wreck with a prize all too many people would kill for.
A suspenseful, professional-grade north country procedural whose heroine, a deft mix of compassion and attitude, would be welcome to return and tie up the gaping loose end Box leaves. The unrelenting cold makes this the perfect beach read.Pub Date: July 28, 2015
ISBN: 978-0-312-58321-7
Page Count: 272
Publisher: Minotaur
Review Posted Online: April 21, 2015
Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 15, 2015
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