Taking a break from his Geezer series (Nursing Homes Are Murder, 2014, etc.), Befeler introduces an appealing new hero while...
A police detective’s retirement turns out to be a lot briefer than he’d expected.
Retired for one week, Gabe Tremont is already driving his wife, Angie, crazy. So she suggests he make a long list of things he might enjoy doing and decides that a night at the Bearcrest Mystery Dinner Playhouse is just the thing to cheer him up for starters. Before they even arrive at the theater, Gabe informs Angie that the butler did it. As the play proceeds, the cast members raise their glasses in a toast, the lights go out, and Peter Ranchard, who’s playing the butler, is found dead offstage, poisoned with cyanide. Gabe immediately takes charge and, in the absence of any other detectives, agrees to handle the case. On stage at the time of Peter’s death were theater owner Mildred Hanson and actors Sophie Elmira, Col. Harold Coats, Arthur Buchanan and Clara Jager, and Mildred identifies a disguised audience member as Helen Lameuse, owner of a rival dinner theater. Gabe proceeds to interview everyone who had the opportunity to poison Peter and finds that they all had motives. Peter had been blackmailing several cast members, had had affairs with several more and was stealing prescription blanks from his psychiatrist to obtain drugs to sell. While working the case, Gabe continues to eliminate items from his retirement list, which is getting shorter by the day. Finding the killer unsurprisingly persuades him that retirement is not for him.
Taking a break from his Geezer series (Nursing Homes Are Murder, 2014, etc.), Befeler introduces an appealing new hero while maintaining his quirky sense of humor.Pub Date: Jan. 21, 2015
ISBN: 978-1-4328-2964-3
Page Count: 266
Publisher: Five Star/Gale Cengage
Review Posted Online: Nov. 5, 2014
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Nov. 15, 2014
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
Hopefully, this is just the first adventure of many Steiner will write for DS Bradshaw and her team.
A new and complex police heroine tries to solve a high-profile missing persons case while seeking domestic fulfillment in Cambridge.
Thirty-nine and single, DS Manon Bradshaw is feeling the burn of loneliness. As she pursues dead-end date after dead-end date, her personal life seems a complete disaster, but her professional interest and energy are piqued when the beautiful graduate-student daughter of a famous physician goes missing, apparently the victim of foul play. As the investigation into free-spirited Edith Hind’s disappearance uncovers no strong leads, Manon finds herself drawn to two unconventional males: one, a possible romantic partner, plays a tangential role in the investigation when he finds a body; the other, a young boy with a tragic home life, mourns the death of his brother, who also might have ties to Edith or her family. As Manon draws nearer to the truth about Edith, aided by her idealistic partner, Davy, and their team of homicide detectives, she also has to face the fact that she might not be destined to follow the traditional domestic model. Though it follows all the typical twists and turns of a modern police procedural, this novel stands out from the pack in two significant ways: first of all, in the solution, which reflects a sophisticated commentary on today’s news stories about how prejudices about race and privilege play out in our justice system; and second, in the wounded, compassionate, human character of Manon. Her struggles to define love and family at a time when both are open to interpretation make for a highly charismatic and engaging story.
Hopefully, this is just the first adventure of many Steiner will write for DS Bradshaw and her team.Pub Date: June 28, 2016
ISBN: 978-0-8129-9832-0
Page Count: 368
Publisher: Random House
Review Posted Online: March 29, 2016
Kirkus Reviews Issue: April 15, 2016
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
IN THE NEWS
A meticulously built mystery that follows a careful ascent toward a breaking point that will leave you breathless. It’s...
A dark, still figure, wearing long black robes and a hood, appears on the charming village green of Three Pines, a small Québec town; though at first it seems scary but harmless, it turns out to be something much more sinister.
The strange figure’s appearance coincides with a Halloween party at the local bistro, attended by the usual villagers but also four out-of-town guests. They are friends from the Université de Montréal who meet for a yearly reunion at the B&B in Three Pines. But this event actually happened months ago, and village resident Armand Gamache, now head of the Sûreté du Québec, is recounting the story from the witness stand in a courtroom suffering from oppressive summer heat. Gamache’s testimony becomes narrative, explaining how over the course of a few days the masked man grew into a fixture on the village green and morphed slowly into an omen. Gamache’s son-in-law and second-in-command, Jean-Guy Beauvoir, is asked to research the “dark thing’s” back story after one of the B&B guests, a journalist, mentions that the figure reminds him of story he did on an old Spanish tradition, that of the “debt collector.” It becomes clear, as Gamache relays the events leading up to murder, that “someone in the village had done something so horrific that a Conscience had been called.” But did the dark thing come for a villager or for one of their guests? Conscience is an overarching theme in Penny’s latest, seeping into the courtroom narrative as Gamache grapples with an enemy much larger than the dark thing, a war he took on as the new Chief Superintendent. His victory depends on the outcome, and the path, of this murder trial. While certain installments in Penny’s bestselling series take Gamache and his team to the far reaches of Québec, others build their tension not with a chase but instead in the act of keeping still—this is one such book. The tension has never been greater, and Gamache has sat for months waiting, and waiting, to act, with Conscience watching close by.
A meticulously built mystery that follows a careful ascent toward a breaking point that will leave you breathless. It’s Three Pines as you have never seen it before.Pub Date: Aug. 29, 2017
ISBN: 978-1-250-06619-0
Page Count: 400
Publisher: Minotaur
Review Posted Online: June 5, 2017
Kirkus Reviews Issue: June 15, 2017
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