by Naomi Hirahara ‧ RELEASE DATE: March 16, 2010
Aging and financially struggling Mas Arai’s fourth case (Snakeskin Shamisen, 2006, etc.) is shaggy but very engaging,...
Elderly Los Angeles gardener Mas Arai turns unlikely sleuth again to help a friend in distress.
After a rocky period, Mas is very close to his daughter Mari, who’s recently made him a grandfather. So he’s doubly fretful at the wedding rehearsal and dinner of his best friend, Haruo Mukai. Besides worrying about his responsibilities as best man, he’s sorry to see the strained relationship between Haruo and bride-to-be Spoon’s daughter, Dee, who has a history of drug use. Then Mas gets a late-night call from the heartbroken Haruo, announcing abruptly that the wedding is off. Apparently Dee has convinced her mother that Haruo, who spends a little too much time gambling at local card clubs, stole Spoon’s valuable doll collection from Hina House. When Mas goes to see Spoon, he faces an uncomfortable encounter with police who mistake him for an intruder before learning from Spoon that she called off the wedding because of her own commitment jitters. Since the dolls are still missing and fragile Haruo remains the prime suspect, however, Mas decides to investigate. The theft is easily traced to the troubled Dee, but that news takes Mas only so far in recovering the dolls, a task that involves seamier quarters of the city. As Haruo continues to spin out of control, Mas must juggle his amateur sleuthing with the demands of multiple gardening clients.
Aging and financially struggling Mas Arai’s fourth case (Snakeskin Shamisen, 2006, etc.) is shaggy but very engaging, written with heart and depth, and starring an Everyman for our time.Pub Date: March 16, 2010
ISBN: 978-0-312-54555-0
Page Count: 256
Publisher: Dunne/Minotaur
Review Posted Online: April 16, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 1, 2010
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by J.A. Jance ‧ RELEASE DATE: April 2, 2019
Proficient but eminently predictable. Amid all the time shifts and embedded backstories, the most surprising feature is how...
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A convicted killer’s list of five people he wants dead runs the gamut from the wife he’s already had murdered to franchise heroine Ali Reynolds.
Back in the day, women came from all over to consult Santa Clarita fertility specialist Dr. Edward Gilchrist. Many of them left his care happily pregnant, never dreaming that the father of the babies they carried was none other than the physician himself, who donated his own sperm rather than that of the handsome, athletic, disease-free men pictured in his scrapbook. When Alexandra Munsey’s son, Evan, is laid low by the kidney disease he’s inherited from his biological father and she returns to Gilchrist in search of the donor’s medical records, the roof begins to fall in on him. By the time it’s done falling, he’s serving a life sentence in Folsom Prison for commissioning the death of his wife, Dawn, the former nurse and sometime egg donor who’d turned on him. With nothing left to lose, Gilchrist tattoos himself with the initials of five people he blames for his fall: Dawn; Leo Manuel Aurelio, the hit man he’d hired to dispose of her; Kaitlyn Todd, the nurse/receptionist who took Dawn’s place; Alex Munsey, whose search for records upset his apple cart; and Ali Reynolds, the TV reporter who’d helped put Alex in touch with the dozen other women who formed the Progeny Project because their children looked just like hers. No matter that Ali’s been out of both California and the news business for years; Gilchrist and his enablers know that revenge can’t possibly be served too cold. Wonder how far down that list they’ll get before Ali, aided once more by Frigg, the methodical but loose-cannon AI first introduced in Duel to the Death (2018), turns on them?
Proficient but eminently predictable. Amid all the time shifts and embedded backstories, the most surprising feature is how little the boundary-challenged AI, who gets into the case more or less inadvertently, differs from your standard human sidekick with issues.Pub Date: April 2, 2019
ISBN: 978-1-5011-5101-9
Page Count: 352
Publisher: Gallery Books/Simon & Schuster
Review Posted Online: Feb. 18, 2019
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 1, 2019
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by Lorna Barrett ‧ RELEASE DATE: Aug. 13, 2019
An anodyne visit with Tricia and her friends and enemies hung on a thin mystery.
Too much free time leads a New Hampshire bookseller into yet another case of murder.
Now that Tricia Miles has Pixie Poe and Mr. Everett practically running her bookstore, Haven’t Got a Clue, she finds herself at loose ends. Her wealthy sister, Angelica, who in the guise of Nigela Ricita has invested heavily in making Stoneham a bookish tourist attraction, is entering the amateur competition for the Great Booktown Bake-Off. So Tricia, who’s recently taken up baking as a hobby, decides to join her and spends a lot of time looking for the perfect cupcake recipe. A visit to another bookstore leaves Tricia witnessing a nasty argument between owner Joyce Widman and next-door neighbor Vera Olson over the trimming of tree branches that hang over Joyce’s yard—also overheard by new town police officer Cindy Pearson. After Tricia accepts Joyce’s offer of some produce from her garden, they find Vera skewered by a pitchfork, and when Police Chief Grant Baker arrives, Joyce is his obvious suspect. Ever since Tricia moved to Stoneham, the homicide rate has skyrocketed (Poisoned Pages, 2018, etc.), and her history with Baker is fraught. She’s also become suspicious about the activities at Pets-A-Plenty, the animal shelter where Vera was a dedicated volunteer. Tricia’s offered her expertise to the board, but president Toby Kingston has been less than welcoming. With nothing but baking on her calendar, Tricia has plenty of time to investigate both the murder and her vague suspicions about the shelter. Plenty of small-town friendships and rivalries emerge in her quest for the truth.
An anodyne visit with Tricia and her friends and enemies hung on a thin mystery.Pub Date: Aug. 13, 2019
ISBN: 978-1-9848-0272-9
Page Count: 320
Publisher: Berkley
Review Posted Online: May 26, 2019
Kirkus Reviews Issue: June 15, 2019
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