French’s strikingly mature prose purrs along as smoothly as ever, but the mystery is a mess from beginning to end, and the...
Can psychotherapist Frieda Klein possibly get in any worse with the members of London's Metropolitan Police whose patience with her has already worn thin? Yes, she can—when the evidence marks her as a murderer.
By the time his corpse is fished out of the Thames, neurologist Alexander Holland is scarcely identifiable. But a hospital bracelet he’s wearing labeled “Dr. F. Klein” leads DCI Sarah Hussein and DC Glen Bryant to Frieda, and she makes the dry-eyed identification. Asked why one of her former patients would be wearing her bracelet when he got his throat cut, she reluctantly acknowledges over several interrogations that Sandy Holland was more than her patient; he was a former lover who wouldn’t accept their breakup and kept calling her with the persistence of a stalker. Since Frieda maintains that she’s already being stalked by murderous Dean Reeve (Thursday’s Children, 2016, etc.), who she insists must have killed Sandy, Hussein and Bryant think this sounds like an awful lot of stalkers, and when Sandy’s wallet turns up in her dresser drawer, they prepare to arrest her. Instead of turning herself in, however, Frieda takes it on the lam, going to ground in a burrow arranged by her friend Josef Morozov, a Ukrainian builder with contacts from here to Kiev. At first determined to gather evidence against Reeve, she gets a momentary jolt when the timetable for Sandy’s murder indicates that Reeve can’t have killed him but smoothly switches gears, masquerading as the world’s most improbable nanny in order to snoop into the private lives of Sandy’s other friends, a disconcerting number of whom turn out to be former lovers as well, until she shakes one tree too many and the killer appears in her path.
French’s strikingly mature prose purrs along as smoothly as ever, but the mystery is a mess from beginning to end, and the heroine’s tough/imperiled shtick is beginning to wear thin. For loyalists only.Pub Date: Oct. 4, 2016
ISBN: 978-0-14-312722-2
Page Count: 336
Publisher: Penguin
Review Posted Online: July 19, 2016
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 1, 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
© Copyright 2025 Kirkus Media LLC. All Rights Reserved.
Follow
Popular in this Genre
We can’t wait for you to join Kirkus!
It’s free and takes less than 10 seconds!
Already have an account? Log in.
OR
Sign in with GoogleTrouble signing in? Retrieve credentials.
Welcome Back!
OR
Sign in with GoogleTrouble signing in? Retrieve credentials.
