Here’s hoping for a return of Sutton’s heroine with the same pizzazz but a little less woolgathering.
Murder disrupts an interracial family’s adjustment to a rural English town.
Londoners Daphne and James Brewster aren’t sure how well they’ll fit into the tiny Norfolk village of Pudding Corner. Daphne, “an immaculately presented thirty-something Black woman,” has an edge to her, and James, “a blond and blue-eyed white male,” knows that while he may fly under the radar, his wife will always speak her mind. But when a road rage incident over a London parking spot spooks the couple, they feel that a move to the country may be the safest option for them and their three children. They fit into their new home remarkably well: Daphne’s neighbors are eager to buy her restored and hand-painted furniture, and their children thrive at Pepperbridge Primary School, where Charles Papplewick runs a tight ship. Not long after the Brewsters’ arrival, however, the headmaster is unfortunately found dead in the potting shed on his beloved allotment. It takes nearly half the story for the local constabulary to decide that his death is a murder, but once they do, Daphne naturally gets sucked into the investigation. Sutton’s unfolding of her narrative is peculiar: Following an introduction to the people and places in the village, the prologue seems more like a flashback. And after the murderer is unmasked, a true flashback revisits motives already revealed and introduces characters never mentioned before. The convoluted and sometimes redundant plotting deflates Sutton’s otherwise crisp storytelling, giving the formidable Daphne’s debut just a mite less punch.
Here’s hoping for a return of Sutton’s heroine with the same pizzazz but a little less woolgathering.Pub Date: May 27, 2025
ISBN: 9781496754813
Page Count: 304
Publisher: John Scognamiglio Books/Kensington
Review Posted Online: March 22, 2025
Kirkus Reviews Issue: April 15, 2025
Intrigue, murder, and vengeance make for a darkly enjoyable read.
A woman’s life takes a stunning turn and a wall comes tumbling down in this tense Cold War spy drama.
In Berlin in 1989, the wall is about to crumble, and Anne Simpson’s husband, Stefan Koehler, goes missing. She is a translator working with refugees from the communist bloc, and he is a piano tuner who travels around Europe with orchestras. Or so he claims. German intelligence service the BND and America’s CIA bring her in for questioning, wrongly thinking she’s protecting him. Soon she begins to learn more about Stefan, whom she had met in the Netherlands a few years ago. She realizes he’s a “gregarious musician with easy charm who collected friends like a beachcomber collects shells, keeping a few, discarding most.” Police find his wallet in a canal and his prized zither in nearby bushes but not his body. Has he been murdered? What’s going on? And why does the BND care? If Stefan is alive, he’s in deep trouble, because he’s believed to be working for the Stasi. She’s told “the dead have a way of showing up. It is only the living who hide.” And she’s quite believable when she wonders, “Can you grieve for someone who betrayed you?” Smart and observant, she notes that the reaction by one of her interrogators is “as false as his toupee. Obvious, uncalled for, and easily put on.” Lurking behind the scenes is the Matchmaker, who specializes in finding women—“American. Divorced. Unhappy,” and possibly having access to Western secrets—who will fall for one of his Romeos. Anne is the perfect fit. “The matchmaker turned love into tradecraft,” a CIA agent tells her. But espionage is an amoral business where duty trumps decency, and “deploring the morality of spies is like deploring violence in boxers.” It’s a sentiment John le Carré would have endorsed, but Anne may have the final word.
Intrigue, murder, and vengeance make for a darkly enjoyable read.Pub Date: Feb. 1, 2022
ISBN: 978-1-64313-865-7
Page Count: 352
Publisher: Pegasus Crime
Review Posted Online: Jan. 11, 2022
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 1, 2022
The lavish food descriptions and appended recipes are the best parts of this anemic mystery.
Christmas is coming, but so is trouble for South Lick, Indiana.
Robbie Jordan, owner and chief cook at Pans ’N Pancakes, returns from solving a murder in California just in time for the holiday rush, which is complicated more than most Christmastimes by a number of surprises that disrupt her circle of friends. First, her assistant, Danna Beedle, gets a visit from Marcus Vandemere, a young biracial man claiming to be her half brother, an assertion that thrills Danna despite the doubts of some friends and relatives. Next comes a fire that nearly destroys the home of anesthesiologist Dr. William Geller, a racist whose wife, Tina, reportedly left him years ago. When a skeleton turns up in the attic, the not-so-esteemed doctor has some explaining to do. Robbie’s nemesis, Detective Octavia Slade, who recently married Robbie’s former boyfriend, is more willing than usual to accept help from Robbie, who has a knack for finding things out. The next to die is Tina’s twin, Toni, who knew Marcus from karate classes. Toni’s husband is the prime suspect, but Robbie’s convinced the fatalities are connected. With help from her boyfriend and her network of friends, she attempts to clear things up before the killer spoils her holiday by adding her to his list.
The lavish food descriptions and appended recipes are the best parts of this anemic mystery.Pub Date: Sept. 29, 2020
ISBN: 978-1-4967-2317-8
Page Count: 304
Publisher: Kensington
Review Posted Online: June 30, 2020
Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 15, 2020
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