In their fifth adventure, Kasasian’s mismatched detective team (The Secrets of Gaslights Lane, 2017, etc.) is in fine form...
A Victorian detective with a unique style and the ward who doubles as his assistant track down a serial rapist.
Sidney Grice—“the finest personal detective in the empire,” as he announces himself—is a man of impossibly high standards, extraordinarily keen senses, finicky personal habits, a relentless devotion to the truth that outweighs all tact, a tendency to lose his glass eyeball at inopportune times, and little regard for women apart from Connie Middleton, the mother of his ward, March Middleton. March herself is ever the butt of Sidney’s scorn, and he also wastes little patience on his latest client, Lucy Bocking, who was assaulted, beaten, and slashed. Sidney is scarcely more sympathetic to Lucy’s friend Freda Wilde, hideously disfigured by fire and left without relatives when Steep House, her family home, burned down. Lucy’s house next door escaped the fire, and she took in Freda as a companion—and a rather resentful one at times, because her wounds, unlike Lucy’s, will never heal. The chief suspect in the assault, the German Kaiser’s second cousin Prince Ulrich Schlangezahn, was implicated in an earlier rape. March tries in vain to entrap him in the same opium den where Lucy and Freda were attacked. A second attempt with some of her friends goes terribly wrong, and a related case of a missing person ends in a shocking mutilation. The only bright spot in March’s life is Inspector George Pound, who finally proposes to her. Although she gladly accepts, she can’t seem to find the chance to tell her guardian, for they’re both too intent on capturing the man who has stalked numerous women in London and marked their foreheads with a sinister symbol. The outcome will leave more than a few readers feeling repulsed and betrayed.
In their fifth adventure, Kasasian’s mismatched detective team (The Secrets of Gaslights Lane, 2017, etc.) is in fine form for fans who like convoluted plots, lovingly detailed gore, and mean-spirited humor. The squeamish should approach with caution or not at all.Pub Date: Dec. 5, 2017
ISBN: 978-1-68177-564-7
Page Count: 480
Publisher: Pegasus Crime
Review Posted Online: Sept. 17, 2017
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Oct. 1, 2017
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
Young Starla is an endearing character whose spirited observations propel this nicely crafted story.
Crandall (Sleep No More, 2010, etc.) delivers big with a coming-of-age story set in Mississippi in 1963 and narrated by a precocious 9-year-old.
Due in part to tradition, intimidation and Jim Crow laws, segregation is very much ingrained into the Southern lifestyle in 1963. Few white children question these rules, least of all Starla Caudelle, a spunky young girl who lives with her stern, unbending grandmother in Cayuga Springs, Miss., and spends an inordinate amount of time on restriction for her impulsive actions and sassy mouth. Starla’s dad works on an oil rig in the Gulf; her mother abandoned the family to seek fame and fortune in Nashville when Starla was 3. In her youthful innocence, Starla’s convinced that her mother’s now a big singing star, and she dreams of living with her again one day, a day that seems to be coming more quickly than Starla’s anticipated. Convinced that her latest infraction is about to land her in reform school, Starla decides she has no recourse but to run away from home and head to Nashville to find her mom. Ill prepared for the long, hot walk and with little concept of time and distance, Starla becomes weak and dehydrated as she trudges along the hot, dusty road. She gladly accepts water and a ride from Eula, a black woman driving an old truck, and finds, to her surprise, that she’s not Eula’s only passenger. Inside a basket is a young white baby, an infant supposedly abandoned outside a church, whom Eula calls James. Although Eula doesn’t intend to drive all the way to Nashville, when she shows up at her home with the two white children, a confrontation with her husband forces her into becoming a part of Starla’s journey, and it’s this journey that creates strong bonds between the two: They help each other face fears as they each become stronger individuals. Starla learns firsthand about the abuse and scare tactics used to intimidate blacks and the skewed assumption of many whites that blacks are inferior beings. Assisted by a black schoolteacher who shows Eula and Starla unconditional acceptance and kindness, both ultimately learn that love and kinship transcend blood ties and skin color.
Young Starla is an endearing character whose spirited observations propel this nicely crafted story.Pub Date: July 2, 2013
ISBN: 978-1-4767-0772-3
Page Count: 320
Publisher: Gallery Books/Simon & Schuster
Review Posted Online: May 20, 2013
Kirkus Reviews Issue: June 15, 2013
BOOK REVIEW
More of a western than a mystery, like most of Joe’s adventures, and all the better for the open physical clashes that...
Wyoming Game and Fish Warden Joe Pickett (Free Fire, 2007, etc.), once again at the governor’s behest, stalks the wraithlike figure who’s targeting elk hunters for death.
Frank Urman was taken down by a single rifle shot, field-dressed, beheaded and hung upside-down to bleed out. (You won’t believe where his head eventually turns up.) The poker chip found near his body confirms that he’s the third victim of the Wolverine, a killer whose animus against hunters is evidently being whipped up by anti-hunting activist Klamath Moore. The potential effects on the state’s hunting revenues are so calamitous that Governor Spencer Rulon pulls out all the stops, and Pickett is forced to work directly with Wyoming Game and Fish Director Randy Pope, the boss who fired him from his regular job in Saddlestring District. Three more victims will die in rapid succession before Joe is given a more congenial colleague: Nate Romanowski, the outlaw falconer who pledged to protect Joe’s family before he was taken into federal custody. As usual in this acclaimed series, the mystery is slight and its solution eminently guessable long before it’s confirmed by testimony from an unlikely source. But the people and scenes and enduring conflicts that lead up to that solution will stick with you for a long time.
More of a western than a mystery, like most of Joe’s adventures, and all the better for the open physical clashes that periodically release the tension between the scheming adversaries.Pub Date: May 20, 2008
ISBN: 978-0-399-15488-1
Page Count: 320
Publisher: Putnam
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 15, 2008
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