After the razor-sharp focus of Destroyer Angel (2014), Barr’s latest is a surprisingly hot mess, awash in scattered crimes...
Ranger Anna Pigeon, sent from the Rockies to Maine’s Acadia National Park for a three-week stint, finds the brief interval more than long enough for another round of murder and assorted skulduggery.
It seems like an especially good time to leave Boulder, where 16-year-old Elizabeth, the adopted daughter of Anna’s friend Heath Jarrod, has turned withdrawn and suicidal after becoming the victim first of unwanted and wholly inappropriate sexual overtures and then of an unrelenting barrage of cyberstalking and cybershaming. So packing up Heath, Elizabeth, and their dog Wily, Anna heads east just in time to run smack into a bizarre murder plot. Nurse Paulette Duffy, newly reunited with Acadia ranger Denise Castle, the identical twin separated from her for most of their lifetimes, is so convinced that her abusive husband, lobsterman Kurt Duffy, is going to kill her that she decides to strike first, establishing an ironclad alibi while her newfound sister does the dirty work. Denise, whose inability to cover her tracks is magnified by an inherited disease she doesn’t know about and a series of comically unlikely coincidences, arouses Anna’s suspicions almost instantly and just as quickly decides that “the pigeon” has to go. Lest Elizabeth feel neglected, her tormenter follows her to Acadia and demands a meeting that can’t possibly end well. By the time it’s all over, Anna will have been kidnapped twice, the second time duct-taped to a babe in arms.
After the razor-sharp focus of Destroyer Angel (2014), Barr’s latest is a surprisingly hot mess, awash in scattered crimes whose perpetrators’ behaviors defy belief. There’s not even much about Acadia National Park.Pub Date: May 17, 2016
ISBN: 978-1-250-06469-1
Page Count: 384
Publisher: Minotaur
Review Posted Online: March 2, 2016
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 15, 2016
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
A murder is committed in a stalled transcontinental train in the Balkans, and every passenger has a watertight alibi. But Hercule Poirot finds a way.
**Note: This classic Agatha Christie mystery was originally published in England as Murder on the Orient Express, but in the United States as Murder in the Calais Coach. Kirkus reviewed the book in 1934 under the original US title, but we changed the title in our database to the now recognizable title Murder on the Orient Express. This is the only name now known for the book. The reason the US publisher, Dodd Mead, did not use the UK title in 1934 was to avoid confusion with the 1932 Graham Greene novel, Orient Express.
Pub Date: Feb. 28, 1934
ISBN: 978-0062073495
Page Count: -
Publisher: Dodd, Mead
Review Posted Online: Sept. 20, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 1, 1934
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