Ripley’s best book: a wickedly funny sendup of the clichés behind all those classic mysteries and their successors.
After a dozen authorized pastiches featuring Albert Campion in his autumn years, Ripley attacks the conventions of golden age whodunits in a much more metafictional way.
Kicking off his tale with the announcement that “this is not a conventional crime novel, rather a novel about writing crime novels,” Ripley invites readers into the world of mediocre mystery writer Duncan Torrens through the eyes of Roland Wilkes, who edited his final 10 novels after Edward Jesser, the founding publisher of Boothby & Briggs, indicated that he couldn’t stand Torrens’ increasingly undistinguished fiction but couldn’t bear to cut the reclusive, uncomplaining author loose. Roly recalls his surprisingly productive relationship with Alan Hibbert, who wrote for many years under the Torrens byline without ever tipping off most of his neighbors in the Hertfordshire village of Dunkley. Their relationship lasted until B&B was acquired by a Scandinavian conglomerate that fired Roly and refused to publish the latest Torrens title. But the bottom doesn’t really fall out of Roly’s world until mystery podcaster Jacon-with-a-“C” Archer, who’s been hired by rival publisher Spencer Crow to investigate the possibility of reprinting the Torrens oeuvre on the cheap, tries to pump Roly, now a public librarian, for information about the virtually forgotten author. The kaleidoscopic revelations that follow, delivered with deadpan wit, are likely to confirm readers’ most paranoid fears about the worlds of publishing, authorship, business, and domestic relations. Ripley punctuates his story with two dozen clearly marked references to mystery writers famous and obscure that his appendix elucidates. Aficionados are likely to recognize even more that he never explains.
Ripley’s best book: a wickedly funny sendup of the clichés behind all those classic mysteries and their successors.Pub Date: Sept. 2, 2025
ISBN: 9781448315611
Page Count: 272
Publisher: Severn House
Review Posted Online: July 17, 2025
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 15, 2025
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
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