James keeps the whole caravan lumbering efficiently along, though he never quite dispels the suspicion that not even a rock...
The return of a Brighton girl who made it big spells nothing but trouble for Detective Superintendent Roy Grace and his colleagues in the Sussex Police (Dead Man’s Grip, 2011, etc.).
Now that she’s returned to her birthplace to star as George IV’s mistress in The King’s Lover, everyone, it seems, wants a piece of rocker-turned-thespian Gaia Lafayette. An anonymous sender of emails who thinks the role should have gone to a more established actress has already shot Gaia’s assistant to death in LA. Failed playwright Drayton Wheeler, convinced that producer Larry Brooker stole the film’s idea from him, is plotting revenge. So is Anna Galicia, the fan who’s spent £275,000 on Gaia memorabilia only to be spurned when she tried to talk herself into a face-to-face with her idol. Kevin Spinella, chief crime reporter for the Brighton Argus, demands details on the latest threats to Gaia even though he’s on his honeymoon in the Maldives. Clearly, protecting a superstar who doesn’t want to surrender her freedom of movement in a nation where practically no one, including the police, carries firearms will be a tall order for the Sussex Police. Roy Grace, who’s in charge of the detail, has troubles of his own. An unidentifiable torso has turned up on Keith Winter’s chicken farm, and vicious gangster Amis Smallbone, whom Grace put away 12 years ago, has been released from prison bent on vengeance. And that doesn’t even exhaust the list of miscreants, who are so thick on the ground that there’s even a darkly humorous scene in which two of Gaia’s stalkers, unknown to each other, briefly meet
James keeps the whole caravan lumbering efficiently along, though he never quite dispels the suspicion that not even a rock star could possibly have so many enemies independently determined to do her harm.Pub Date: Dec. 4, 2012
ISBN: 978-0-312-64284-6
Page Count: 448
Publisher: Minotaur
Review Posted Online: Oct. 8, 2012
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Nov. 1, 2012
Some of the twists are more convincing than the last one, which leaves a few loose ends. But it’s great to see Cole (The...
The shooting of an apparent serial killer allows the LAPD to close the books on seven murders—but private eye Elvis Cole won’t have it.
Dead suspects don’t look any more guilty than Lionel Byrd. In his hand is the gun that fired the fatal shot into his head; at his feet is an album with Polaroids of seven women who’ve been killed at the rate of one a year, each photo snapped moments after the subject’s death. Homicide detective Connie Bastilla is only too happy to write finis to a troublesome case. But Cole, who produced the evidence that allowed Byrd’s lawyer to verify an alibi for the fifth murder, isn’t convinced. And he comes up with enough evidence to convince the seventh victim’s brothers to quit beating him up and help him investigate further. The harder Elvis digs, the more Byrd’s suicide looks like a murder whose evidence the cops are deliberately sweeping under the rug. But how far does the cover-up extend, and how high up are its beneficiaries? With some help from Detective Carol Starkey, late of the bomb squad, and his partner Joe Pike, whom nobody’s ever accused of being too sensitive, Cole follows the trail through a string of well-placed twists to a satisfying climax.
Some of the twists are more convincing than the last one, which leaves a few loose ends. But it’s great to see Cole (The Forgotten Man, 2005, etc.) back in action.Pub Date: July 1, 2008
ISBN: 978-0-7432-8164-5
Page Count: 288
Publisher: Simon & Schuster
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: June 1, 2008
Perhaps too much ingenuity for its own good. But except for Jeffery Deaver and Sophie Hannah, no one currently working the...
Fired Scotland Yard detective Daniel Hawthorne bursts onto the scene of his unwilling collaborator and amanuensis, screenwriter/novelist Anthony, who seems to share all Horowitz’s (Forever and a Day, 2018, etc.) credentials, to tell him that the game’s afoot again.
The victim whose death requires Hawthorne’s attention this time is divorce attorney Richard Pryce, bashed to death in the comfort of his home with a wine bottle. The pricey vintage was a gift from Pryce’s client, well-to-do property developer Adrian Lockwood, on the occasion of his divorce from noted author Akira Anno, who reportedly celebrated in a restaurant only a few days ago by pouring a glass of wine over the head of her husband’s lawyer. Clearly she’s too good a suspect to be true, and she’s soon dislodged from the top spot by the news that Gregory Taylor, who’d long ago survived a cave-exploring accident together with Pryce that left their schoolmate Charles Richardson dead, has been struck and killed by a train at King’s Cross Station. What’s the significance of the number “182” painted on the crime scene’s wall and of the words (“What are you doing here? It’s a bit late”) with which Pryce greeted his murderer? The frustrated narrator (The Word Is Murder, 2018) can barely muster the energy to reflect on these clues because he’s so preoccupied with fending off the rudeness of Hawthorne, who pulls a long face if his sidekick says boo to the suspects they interview, and the more-than-rudeness of the Met’s DI Cara Grunshaw, who threatens Hawthorne with grievous bodily harm if he doesn’t pass on every scrap of intelligence he digs up. Readers are warned that the narrator’s fondest hope—“I like to be in control of my books”—will be trampled and that the Sherlock-ian solution he laboriously works out is only the first of many.
Perhaps too much ingenuity for its own good. But except for Jeffery Deaver and Sophie Hannah, no one currently working the field has anywhere near this much ingenuity to burn.Pub Date: May 28, 2019
ISBN: 978-0-06-267683-2
Page Count: 384
Publisher: Harper/HarperCollins
Review Posted Online: March 3, 2019
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 15, 2019
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