A charming and delightful cozy whodunit that will leave fans eager for the next installment.
Larkin Day returns in the second entry in Dieker’s mystery series, following Ode to Murder (2022).
After solving her first case, grad student Larkin is considering going into business as a private detective for hire and making Pratincola, Iowa—a Cedar Rapids suburb—her permanent home. Still living in her mother’s guest bedroom, she’s eager to make a fresh start in the new year. Her first case is the online “murder” of Bonnie Cooper, a fitness instructor and influencer who’s alive and well but whose social media, email, and cellphone accounts have been mysteriously erased from existence: “About as murdered as you can be without being dead,” as Bonnie describes it. Larkin’s job is to rescue Bonnie from this purgatory before she loses her sponsors, her subscribers, and her job at the local fitness center. Another person having career trouble is Larkin’s mother, Josephine Day, the dean at Howell College; she’s started receiving threatening messages in the form of yard signs after word gets around about her romantic relationship with police officer Claire. Larkin follows a social media trail to track down her culprits, but her personal life may be the most tangled case of all. Why is she putting off filing paperwork to be an officially licensed detective? Has she given up on working in theater? How’s her tentative relationship with music professor Ed going? Does her best friend Anni have a boyfriend? Overall, this is a charming mystery that offers readers a welcome twist on the typical cozy mystery plot. If readers haven’t read the first book, the author makes it as easy as possible for them to catch up by offering plentiful references to past events. Larkin’s journey will particularly speak to millennials who find themselves navigating the problems of the baby boomers and members of Gen Z in their lives while also trying to figure things out for themselves. The cast of secondary characters is entertaining and diverse, and the pacing is brisk. Clever humor and engaging relationships keep the tone light but satisfying throughout.
A charming and delightful cozy whodunit that will leave fans eager for the next installment.Pub Date: Jan. 17, 2023
ISBN: 9781733691970
Page Count: 252
Publisher: Shortwave Media
Review Posted Online: Feb. 9, 2023
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 15, 2023
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
A satisfying thriller that will warm the hearts of fans who already take comfort in hating the forces of evil.
Lt. Eve Dallas’ 63rd futuristic case is less a whodunit than a manhunt for an unusually sympathetic killer.
Thirteen years ago, way back in 2048, scientific genius Steve Redman—father of the Banner-Wyst corporation’s Rainmaker Project—narrowly escaped death in a gas explosion that killed his pregnant wife and infant son and 200 other residents of their New York City apartment building the night before he planned to report his suspicions about the company to the FBI. Now the bill is coming due for Banner-Wyst. The first death to be discovered is that of Lawrence Chu, Redman’s colleague and trusted friend, whose tenure as director of bioengineering science ends when he’s beaten to death. For quite a while, Dallas and her partner, Det. Delia Peabody, know less about this mystery than their readers do. But when Ezra Dent, a consultant to Banner-Wyst who worked with Redman and Chu back in the day, is murdered in exactly the same ferocious way, Dallas and Peabody, with help from Roarke, Dallas’ tech-billionaire husband, promptly put the pieces together and determine who they’re looking for. The search for Redman, who went AWOL from his hospital bed without a trace six years ago, has its own challenges. So does Dallas’ attempt to get cooperation from partners Calvin Banner and Jacob Wyst, who are clearly in the crosshairs of a killer who seems a lot less monstrous than they are. If the breaks in the case are suspiciously convenient in arriving, readers can pride themselves on taking sides against a mega-corporation whose self-avowed ecological saintliness is undermined by its leaders’ underhanded dealing.
A satisfying thriller that will warm the hearts of fans who already take comfort in hating the forces of evil.Pub Date: Sept. 8, 2026
ISBN: 9781250414564
Page Count: 368
Publisher: St. Martin's
Review Posted Online: May 18, 2026
Kirkus Reviews Issue: June 15, 2026
The delightful debut of a classic, prolific detective.
It takes a quirky sleuth to solve a baffling closed-door murder.
The author himself or, more accurately, some version of him, walks the reader through a “gruesome murder” that occurred in a rural farming village. At the center of the crime is the wealthy Ichiyanagi family, including the widow Itoko and her five children. The “heinous crime” occurs in the evening after the festive wedding of eldest son Kenzo to schoolteacher Katsuko. Yokomizo, part narrator and part raconteur, liberally shares digressions such as the fact that his favorite British author is A.A. Milne, who wrote The Red House Mystery as well as the books about Winnie-the-Pooh. Written in 1946 but set in 1937 before the devastation of World War II, this is the first novel featuring Kosuke Kindaichi, the legendary detective who appeared in more than 70 stories by Yokomizo. If Yokomizo is the Japanese Agatha Christie, Kindaichi may seem the Japanese Hercule Poirot—although actually, given his unkempt hair and apparently distracted manner, he’s more a cross between Poirot and Columbo. Shrewdly, his entrance is delayed until midway through the novel, after the police have stalled and both the family and the reader are anxious for a solution. The narrator’s garrulous charm, in a mystery long on logistics and forensic clues but short on detailed character portraits or extended interactions, is a key to the novel’s success, leavening the more intricate pieces of the puzzle. Armchair detectives will welcome the helpful character list that precedes the story.
The delightful debut of a classic, prolific detective.Pub Date: Sept. 15, 2026
ISBN: 9781805336549
Page Count: 192
Publisher: Pushkin Vertigo
Review Posted Online: July 20, 2026
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 15, 2026
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
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