A page-turner with an unusual location and a coda that provides more questions than answers.
Prolific Shelton (The Loch Ness Papers, 2019, etc.) kicks off a new series featuring a traumatized heroine who flees to Alaska seeking safety.
Beth Rivers, an author who writes thrillers under the name Elizabeth Fairchild, spent three days in a van with an obsessed fan/kidnapper before leaping out of the moving vehicle. After having been hospitalized for injuries that required brain surgery, she’s looking for a place to stay where no one will find her, and she settles on the remote town of Benedict, Alaska. The only ways to get to Benedict are by air or water, and the only one who knows Beth’s true identity is Police Chief Gril Samuels, who sends park ranger Donner Montgomery to pick her up at the airfield because Gril’s busy with an unexplained death. Beth’s plan to stay at Benedict House is almost derailed when she discovers that the hotel is actually a halfway house for female criminals, currently three shoplifters who do odd jobs around town. Beth’s father vanished when she was young, and her mother has spent years looking for him. Beth, raised mostly by her police-chief grandfather, worked for the department as a secretary, though her math and analytical skills sometimes pressed her into service as a crime-scene tech. Now she carries burner phones to keep in touch with her doctor and the detective back home who's working her case. Unable to remember everything that happened to her, she thinks her kidnapper’s name is Levi Brooks but can’t picture his face until she starts having flashbacks. Curious about the death of Benedict local Linda Rafferty, which could be murder or suicide, Beth takes up Gril’s offer to be his consultant and also run the local newspaper, giving her a chance to research Rafferty’s death as she searches for Levi Brooks. In the process, she discovers that she’s far from the only person in Benedict with something to hide.
A page-turner with an unusual location and a coda that provides more questions than answers.Pub Date: Dec. 3, 2019
ISBN: 978-1-250-29521-7
Page Count: 288
Publisher: Minotaur
Review Posted Online: Sept. 14, 2019
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Oct. 1, 2019
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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