Strong scenic detail and a winning heroine make it easy to skip the tangled lineages, obvious red herrings, and...
Slow-starting police procedural examines Main Line society through the eyes of an unusually sensitive working-class homicide detective.
After exploring social and personal pathologies among Massachusetts’s wealthy classes in two books featuring former DA Frances Pratt (Redemption, 2003, etc.), Geary now visits Philadelphia’s suburban upper-class WASP preserve in the persona of Lucy O’Malley, the daughter of a Boston cop who has been recently promoted to the Philadelphia police department’s homicide division. A habitué of Arch, an artsy Rittenhouse Square bar and grill within walking distance of PD headquarters, Lucy becomes romantically entangled with the bar’s owner, Archer Haverill. Scion of a dysfunctional old-money Main Line family, Archer is estranged from his mother, psychiatrist Morgan Reese. The rich/poor contrasts give the romance some spice as Geary shifts the focus to Reese, now the psychiatrist most likely to head the University of Pennsylvania’s new mental health institute. Troubled by the twins she gave up for adoption many years ago after an affair, Reese resolves to let them know who their mommy is—after all, they live practically around the corner with their chilly, loveless, but comfortably rich adoptive parents Faith and Bill Herbert. Then darkly depressed Foster Herbert, who has learned he was adopted but doesn’t know Reese is his biological mother, apparently commits suicide. O’Malley, who works Philadelphia only, doesn’t get involved professionally until about 80 pages later, when Reese is found dead in her car, seemingly shot and bludgeoned to death with a baseball bat. Geary is best when she balances O’Malley’s clue gathering with a wide-eyed exploration of existing and imaginary Philadelphia locations. She’s careful to show the Main Line rich as more than a sad, clueless crowd with too much money, and her cop is vulnerable enough to make mistakes, competent enough to keep plugging.
Strong scenic detail and a winning heroine make it easy to skip the tangled lineages, obvious red herrings, and too-good-to-be-true ending.Pub Date: July 28, 2004
ISBN: 0-446-53217-7
Page Count: 336
Publisher: N/A
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: June 15, 2004
O'Brien proves to be the Oliver Stone of literature, reiterating the same Vietnam stories endlessly without adding any insight. Politician John Wade has just lost an election, and he and his wife, Kathy, have retired to a lakeside cabin to plan their future when she suddenly disappears. O'Brien manages to stretch out this simple premise by sticking in chapters consisting of quotes from various sources (both actual and fictional) that relate to John and Kathy. An unnamed author — an irritating device that recalls the better-handled but still imperfect "Tim O'Brien" narrator of The Things They Carried (1990) — also includes lengthy footnotes about his own experiences in Vietnam. While the sections covering John in the third person are dry, these first-person footnotes are unbearable. O'Brien uses a coy tone (it's as though he's constantly whispering "Ooooh, spooky!"), but there is no suspense: The reader is acquainted with Kathy for only a few pages before her disappearance, so it's impossible to work up any interest in her fate. The same could be said of John, even though he is the focus of the book. Flashbacks and quotes reveal that John was present at the infamous Thuan Yen massacre (for those too thick-headed to understand the connection to My Lai, O'Brien includes numerous real-life references). The symbolism here is beyond cloying. As a child John liked to perform magic tricks, and he was subsequently nicknamed "Sorcerer" by his fellow soldiers — he could make things disappear, get it? John has been troubled for some time. He used to spy on Kathy when they were in college, and his father's habit of calling the chubby boy "Jiggling John" apparently wounded him. All of this is awkwardly uncovered through a pretentious structure that cannot disguise the fact that there is no story here. Sinks like a stone.
Pub Date: Oct. 1, 1994
ISBN: 061870986X
Page Count: 320
Publisher: N/A
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 15, 1994
Three quick, enjoyable reads to get you in a murderous Christmas spirit.
Three familiar sleuths each get a turn in this trio of cozy Christmas mysteries.
First, O’Connor (Murder in Galway, 2019, etc.) dives into Siobhán O’Sullivan’s past. Just graduated from the Garda College and not due to report for duty until the New Year, she’s busy preparing for Christmas when she sees a sign advertising a missing dog and links the disappearance to that of her own family dog and others around town. When the town Santy, Paddy O’Shea, is discovered floating dead in a dunk tank he’s filled with hot chocolate, all the missing dogs are also found, waiting in vain to be part of his extravagant show. Now Siobhán must help catch Santy's killer. Next up, Day (Strangled Eggs and Ham, 2019, etc.) presents South Lick, Indiana, cafe/country store owner Robbie Jordan, whose boyfriend Abe’s father, Howard O’Neill, has secretly acquired Cocoa, a rescued Lab puppy, as a Christmas gift for Abe’s son, Sean. When Howard’s business associate, Jed Greenberg, is found dead on an icy sidewalk, tangled in Cocoa’s leash, it turns out to be murder. Though Jed had plenty of enemies, Howard is a particularly choice suspect because he’d just learned that Jed had cheated him in a business deal. In the final tale, Erickson (Death by Café Mocha, 2019, etc.) features cafe/bookstore owner Krissy Hancock, a locally renowned sleuth who reluctantly accompanies her friend Rita Jablonski to a remote warehouse, where Lewis Coates, whose attention to detail is obsessive, has installed an escape room. Each member of the small group is given their own room whose door code they must determine from cryptic clues. They all manage to escape to a large locked room where they find the corpse of Coates. A prick Krissy finds on his finger and traces to a trick mug strongly suggests that one of the players is also a killer.
Three quick, enjoyable reads to get you in a murderous Christmas spirit.Pub Date: Sept. 24, 2019
ISBN: 978-1-4967-2360-4
Page Count: 320
Publisher: Kensington
Review Posted Online: July 27, 2019
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 15, 2019
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