A nifty series kickoff featuring a hard look at the corrosive atmosphere tearing the country apart.
A small-town radio jock gets involved in big-time murder.
DJ Jaye Jordan has bought a radio station in a Vermont town near the home of her ex-husband, David, the father of her daughter, Ryan. She’s dumped the divisive talk show hosted by ranting right-winger Edwin Anger, instead focusing on requests for mostly romantic songs. Fed up with being picketed by Anger’s two fans in town, she relieves her stress by shooting the head off a nearby snowman only to find Anger’s corpse concealed within. Jaye is too well liked for the townsfolk to consider her a serious suspect as Anger’s killer, but the nasty assistant who’s bucking for his job stirs up his base of crazies, and she soon receives tons of hate mail from writers whose cries grow even louder when they discover she’d converted to Judaism upon marrying David. Luckily, Will Ten Broeck, one of her big supporters, is the governor of Vermont, a descendant of Dutch settlers, a true Knickerbocker, and a moderate Republican who’s easy on the eye. Their friendship slowly blossoms into a romantic relationship as he and her neighbors stand behind her in the battle with Anger’s followers. When Anger’s death is proven to be murder, Jaye’s friends, along with a friendly, flatulent moose and all of David’s relatives, pitch in to support love over hate and solve the crime.
A nifty series kickoff featuring a hard look at the corrosive atmosphere tearing the country apart.Pub Date: Feb. 8, 2022
ISBN: 978-1-64385-945-3
Page Count: 304
Publisher: Crooked Lane
Review Posted Online: Nov. 16, 2021
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Dec. 1, 2021
A whodunit upstaged at every point by the unforgettably febrile intensity of the heroine’s first-person narrative.
Emerson’s striking debut follows a Navajo police photographer almost literally to hell and back.
Rita Todacheene sees dead people. Since most of her attempts to talk to someone about her special power while she was growing up on the reservation ended in disaster, she’s tried to keep it to herself during her five years with the Albuquerque Police Department. Her precarious peace is shattered by the death of Erma Singleton, manager of a bar owned by Matias Romero, her common-law husband. Although lazy Detective Martin Garcia has ruled that Erma fell from a highway bridge, her body shattered by the truck that hit her on the roadway below, Erma insists that she was pushed from the bridge. “Help me get back to my baby,” she tells Rita, “or I’ll make your life a living hell.” Since Rita, a civilian employee, has few resources for an investigation, Erma opens a portal that unleashes scores of ghosts on her, all clamoring for justice or mercy or a few words with the loved ones they left behind. The nightmare that propels Rita forward, from snapping photos of Judge Harrison Winters and his wife and children and dog, all shot dead in what Garcia calls a murder-suicide, to revelations that link both these deaths and Erma’s to the drug business of the Sinaloa cartel, is interleaved with repeated flashbacks that show the misfit Rita’s early years on her Navajo reservation and in her Catholic grade school as she struggles to come to terms with a gift that feels more like a curse. The appeal of the case as a series kickoff is matched by the challenges Emerson will face in pulling off any sequels.
A whodunit upstaged at every point by the unforgettably febrile intensity of the heroine’s first-person narrative.Pub Date: Aug. 2, 2022
ISBN: 978-1-641-29333-4
Page Count: 312
Publisher: Soho Crime
Review Posted Online: May 10, 2022
Kirkus Reviews Issue: June 1, 2022
A top-class cozy infused with dry wit and charming characters who draw you in and leave you wanting more, please.
Four residents of Coopers Chase, a British retirement village, compete with the police to solve a murder in this debut novel.
The Thursday Murder Club started out with a group of septuagenarians working on old murder cases culled from the files of club founder Elizabeth Best’s friend Penny Gray, a former police officer who's now comatose in the village's nursing home. Elizabeth used to have an unspecified job, possibly as a spy, that has left her with a large network of helpful sources. Joyce Meadowcroft is a former nurse who chronicles their deeds. Psychiatrist Ibrahim Arif and well-known political firebrand Ron Ritchie complete the group. They charm Police Constable Donna De Freitas, who, visiting to give a talk on safety at Coopers Chase, finds the residents sharp as tacks. Built with drug money on the grounds of a convent, Coopers Chase is a high-end development conceived by loathsome Ian Ventham and maintained by dangerous crook Tony Curran, who’s about to be fired and replaced with wary but willing Bogdan Jankowski. Ventham has big plans for the future—as soon as he’s removed the nuns' bodies from the cemetery. When Curran is murdered, DCI Chris Hudson gets the case, but Elizabeth uses her influence to get the ambitious De Freitas included, giving the Thursday Club a police source. What follows is a fascinating primer in detection as British TV personality Osman allows the members to use their diverse skills to solve a series of interconnected crimes.
A top-class cozy infused with dry wit and charming characters who draw you in and leave you wanting more, please.Pub Date: Sept. 22, 2020
ISBN: 978-1-98-488096-3
Page Count: 368
Publisher: Pamela Dorman/Viking
Review Posted Online: June 30, 2020
Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 15, 2020
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