A delightfully eccentric detective story despite occasional structural distractions.
A disgraced cop with a rare mental disorder is investigated by the police and hunted by the mob in Thomas’ first installment of a mystery series.
Raymond Mackey’s life is anything but enviable—he was forced out of the Chandler Police Department in Illinois when evidence surfaced that he was connected to Cosmo Green, an associate of José Beggamon, who was a shadowy mob boss generally known as Big Man. Now Mack works as a part-time security guard at a local mall while writing detective thrillers at home. He also suffers from a rare disorder—depersonalization-derealization disorder, or what he calls “Triple-D.” This affliction, which is intelligently described by Thomas, compels Mack to see himself in the third person, as if he’s a character in a movie. Although he’s been off the force for more than four years, Mack finds himself yet again at the center of an investigation: The police are eager to find Suri, his old informant, who may have mob ties. When Mack conducts his own investigation, he realizes Suri’s life is in terrible danger—the result of a murky past that was neither clarified nor resolved in any satisfying way. This is a quirky and refreshingly thoughtful detective story that astutely highlights the common ground shared by investigative work and the labor of writing fiction: “Crime fighters have an instinct for bullshit. Crime writers do too. They know when they’ve written a character off the edge of the cliff of plausibility, so that he just kind of hangs there, Wily-E-Coyote [sic] style, grabbing at thin air as the reader rolls their eyes.” Although the plot can become a dense jumble of entangled subplots—there are simply too many side angles and too many literary feints—this is still a captivating tale, grippingly peculiar and dramatically immersive.
A delightfully eccentric detective story despite occasional structural distractions.Pub Date: Sept. 30, 2021
ISBN: 978-1734630350
Page Count: 250
Publisher: OTF Literary
Review Posted Online: Jan. 3, 2023
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
High art meets low life in a tale a lot more sympathetic to the latter.
Someone is stalking the streets of Lt. Eve Dallas’s New York, intent on bringing new life to sex workers by snuffing out their old ones.
In 2061, prostitutes are called licensed companions, and that’s Leesa Culver’s job description when she’s accosted by a plausible-looking artist who wants to hire her as a model for the night. Before the night is over, she’s been drugged, strangled, costumed, and posed as an uncanny replica of Vermeer’s Girl With a Pearl Earring. The shock of the crime is deepened by the murder the following night of licensed companion Bobby Ren, whose body is discovered at an art gallery entrance costumed and posed as Gainsborough’s Blue Boy. The killer clearly has an obsessive agenda, a rapid-fire timetable, and access to unlimited financial resources that have allowed him to commission expensive custom-made outfits for the victims. This last detail both marks his power and points to the way Dallas, her gazillionaire husband, Roarke, and her sidekick, Det. Delia Peabody, will track him down by methodically narrowing the field of consumers who’ve purchased the costly costumes. After identifying the guilty party two-thirds of the way through the story, they’ll still face an uphill battle convicting a killer with no conscience, no respect for the law, and a budget that would easily cover the means to jump bail, remove his ankle tracker, and hire a private jet to escape to a foreign land with no extradition treaty. Robb keeps it all consistently absorbing by sweating every procedural detail along with her heroine. Only Dallas’ climactic interrogation of her prisoner is a letdown, because it’s perfectly obvious how she’s going to wangle a confession out of him.
High art meets low life in a tale a lot more sympathetic to the latter.Pub Date: Sept. 2, 2025
ISBN: 9781250370822
Page Count: 368
Publisher: St. Martin's
Review Posted Online: May 16, 2025
Kirkus Reviews Issue: June 15, 2025
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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