A fun, escapist read with a dynamic duo.
A murder-and-mayhem adventure unfolds in the small Texas town of Shotgun City.
Twenty-four chapters and 24 authors, each one forwarding a chapter to the next writer without knowing what that scribe would contribute to the narrative. This was the assignment from Cozy Cat Press for what is the publisher’s third such experimental endeavor. The tale opens at 4 a.m. Saturday, when Molly Jones is awakened by a phone call from her roommate, Janet Phillips. Janet is in Shotgun City, 50 miles outside of Dallas, where their close friend Merilee Mason has been arrested on an apparently trumped-up charge. Now, Janet is stuck with a car that will not start, and she needs a ride home. The two friends meet at the jail, where they eventually encounter Officer Eric Bartlett, a three-year veteran of Shotgun’s police force. He later tells them Merilee is being charged with the murder of her mother, who died six months earlier in what had been ruled an accident. But Molly and Janet are sure someone powerful is framing Merilee. The villain is quickly revealed to be Merilee’s uncle, Raymond Boyd, owner of the Flying B Ranch. While there is no mystery as to who the bad guy is and the conclusion is predictable, there are more than a couple of surprises concerning the relationships among the dizzying array of players. Each author adds a new character, a twist, or a piece of an unanticipated backstory. The occasionally humorous, action-fueled storyline builds on the traditional Texas lore of bandits and long-hidden treasure. Then adds a corrupt police department, misfit ranch hands, plenty of guns, a couple of oversized macho trucks, and a refreshing bonus—two strong, young women determined to obtain justice for their friend. Kudos to editor Donley and the team of authors for maintaining a level, lighthearted linguistic tone. There are no jarring switches from chapter to chapter, and readers are likely to forget this is a book composed by committee.
A fun, escapist read with a dynamic duo.Pub Date: Nov. 6, 2020
ISBN: 978-1-952579-17-2
Page Count: 194
Publisher: Cozy Cat Press
Review Posted Online: Feb. 3, 2021
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
Forget about solving all these crimes; the signal triumph here is (spoiler) the heroine’s survival.
Another sweltering month in Charlotte, another boatload of mysteries past and present for overworked, overstressed forensic anthropologist Temperance Brennan.
A week after the night she chases but fails to catch a mysterious trespasser outside her town house, some unknown party texts Tempe four images of a corpse that looks as if it’s been chewed by wild hogs, because it has been. Showboat Medical Examiner Margot Heavner makes it clear that, breaking with her department’s earlier practice (The Bone Collection, 2016, etc.), she has no intention of calling in Tempe as a consultant and promptly identifies the faceless body herself as that of a young Asian man. Nettled by several errors in Heavner’s analysis, and even more by her willingness to share the gory details at a press conference, Tempe launches her own investigation, which is not so much off the books as against the books. Heavner isn’t exactly mollified when Tempe, aided by retired police detective Skinny Slidell and a host of experts, puts a name to the dead man. But the hints of other crimes Tempe’s identification uncovers, particularly crimes against children, spur her on to redouble her efforts despite the new M.E.’s splenetic outbursts. Before he died, it seems, Felix Vodyanov was linked to a passenger ferry that sank in 1994, an even earlier U.S. government project to research biological agents that could control human behavior, the hinky spiritual retreat Sparkling Waters, the dark web site DeepUnder, and the disappearances of at least four schoolchildren, two of whom have also turned up dead. And why on earth was Vodyanov carrying Tempe’s own contact information? The mounting evidence of ever more and ever worse skulduggery will pull Tempe deeper and deeper down what even she sees as a rabbit hole before she confronts a ringleader implicated in “Drugs. Fraud. Breaking and entering. Arson. Kidnapping. How does attempted murder sound?”
Forget about solving all these crimes; the signal triumph here is (spoiler) the heroine’s survival.Pub Date: March 17, 2020
ISBN: 978-1-9821-3888-2
Page Count: 352
Publisher: Scribner
Review Posted Online: Dec. 22, 2019
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 15, 2020
Don’t feel that your current news feed is disturbing enough? Penny has just what you need.
A sequel to The Grey Wolf (2024) that begins with the earlier novel’s last line: “We have a problem.” And what a problem it is.
Now that Chief Inspector Armand Gamache and his allies in and out of the Sûreté du Québec have saved Canada’s water supply from poisoning on a grand scale, you might think they were entitled to some rest and relaxation in Three Pines. No such luck. Don Joseph Moretti, the Sixth Family head who ordered the hit-and-run on biologist Charles Langlois that nearly killed Gamache as well, is plotting still more criminal enterprises, and Gamache can’t be sure that Chief Inspector Evelyn Tardiff, who’s been cozying up to Moretti in order to get the goods on him, hasn’t gone over to the dark side herself. In fact, Gamache’s uncertainty about Evelyn sets the pattern for much of what follows, for another review of one of Langlois’ notebooks reveals a plot so monstrous that it’s impossible to be sure who’s not in on it. Is it really true, as paranoid online rumors have it, that “Canada is about to attack the U.S.”? Or is it really the other way around, as the discovery of War Plan Red would have it? As the threats loom larger and larger, they raise questions as to whether the Black Wolf, the evil power behind them, is Moretti, disgraced former Deputy Prime Minister Marcus Lauzon, whom Gamache has arranged to have released from prison, or someone even more highly placed. A brief introductory note dating Penny’s delivery of the uncannily prophetic manuscript to September 2024 will do little to assuage the anxieties of concerned readers.
Don’t feel that your current news feed is disturbing enough? Penny has just what you need.Pub Date: Oct. 28, 2025
ISBN: 9781250328175
Page Count: 384
Publisher: Minotaur
Review Posted Online: July 17, 2025
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 15, 2025
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