Intriguing information on the Picts adds gravitas to the complex mystery.
A visit to an artist’s studio is both a pleasure and a port into yet another murder case for Delaney Nichols, a Kansas woman living in Scotland.
Moving to Edinburgh has changed Delaney’s life. She loves her work at the Cracked Spine bookshop, her marriage to pub owner Tom, and the friends who’ve helped solve so many murders. Now she’s thrilled to have received a coveted invitation to visit the studio of reclusive artist Ryory Bennigan. Ryory’s carved stones are inspired by the Picts, who lived in Scotland between the years 300 and 900, and about whom little is known except that they were tattooed and often as redheaded as Delaney. Soon after Delaney and Tom arrive at Ryory’s studio, his zealous assistant, Ani, shows out his previous visitor, who introduces himself as Adam Pace. In quite a coincidence, he turns out to be a professor at Delany’s alma mater, the University of Kansas. When Delaney and Tom enter Ryory’s studio, the heavily tattooed artist gives them a chance to carve some stone of their own, and all goes well until Ani becomes ill and Delaney calls for an ambulance. The chance meeting with Adam Pace soon involves Delaney in questions about his attempts to hawk dinosaur bones and a carved stone he claims is Pictish all over town—and, later, questions about what these activities had to do with his suspicious death. Determined to help Inspector Winters, with whom she has a warm relationship, Delaney gets in touch with a friend at the university who reluctantly admits that the professor created some of the dinosaur bones himself on a 3-D printer. It takes a great deal of digging for Delaney to come up with suspects, but her skills are well honed, and her friends add their own expertise in the search for a killer.
Intriguing information on the Picts adds gravitas to the complex mystery.Pub Date: April 1, 2025
ISBN: 9781250336613
Page Count: 304
Publisher: Minotaur
Review Posted Online: Jan. 18, 2025
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 15, 2025
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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