by Peter Kelly ‧ RELEASE DATE: Oct. 11, 2014
A light and breezy take on the noir genre.
A tough private eye solves a series of crimes in Kelly’s debut collection of noir short stories.
Set in Southern California in the early 1930s during the final throes of Prohibition, this take on the noir genre is heavily indebted to the classic works of Dashiell Hammett and Raymond Chandler. Like Chandler’s Phillip Marlowe, Kelly’s protagonist, Frank Murphy, is a tough private detective operating out of a dingy office. The collection starts in typical genre fashion with the arrival of a beautiful client—in this case, an actress named Laura Snow—who sets off a chain of events leading Murphy and his sidekick/love interest, Monica, into a series of mysteries, chases, and shootouts. The title story has Murphy follow Snow’s husband into a web of mobsters and murder when the husband’s connection to a liquor-smuggling syndicate turns deadly. “The Case of The Carousel Killer” finds the detective in search of Snow after an apparent stalker kidnaps her. “Prescription for Murder” revolves around the death of a Hollywood doctor, for which Murphy suspects the doc’s shady business partner. The final mystery involves another missing actor and a case of blackmail. The collection’s Malibu setting is far brighter than the usual seedy portrayal of the greater Los Angeles area, and the same could be said about Kelly’s overall take on the genre. Murphy has some of the wit and moral character that’s expected of noir heroes, and these short, punchy tales don’t linger long enough to become boring. However, their brevity makes them feel insubstantial, as they’re unable to build suspense over their short durations. That said, the author is careful to steer clear of some of the genre’s clichés, particularly regarding femmes fatales; Monica’s inclusion as an active agent in the action, for example, is a welcome update.
A light and breezy take on the noir genre.Pub Date: Oct. 11, 2014
ISBN: 978-1-5027-9038-5
Page Count: 274
Publisher: CreateSpace
Review Posted Online: Dec. 1, 2015
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
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by J.A. Jance ‧ RELEASE DATE: April 2, 2019
Proficient but eminently predictable. Amid all the time shifts and embedded backstories, the most surprising feature is how...
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A convicted killer’s list of five people he wants dead runs the gamut from the wife he’s already had murdered to franchise heroine Ali Reynolds.
Back in the day, women came from all over to consult Santa Clarita fertility specialist Dr. Edward Gilchrist. Many of them left his care happily pregnant, never dreaming that the father of the babies they carried was none other than the physician himself, who donated his own sperm rather than that of the handsome, athletic, disease-free men pictured in his scrapbook. When Alexandra Munsey’s son, Evan, is laid low by the kidney disease he’s inherited from his biological father and she returns to Gilchrist in search of the donor’s medical records, the roof begins to fall in on him. By the time it’s done falling, he’s serving a life sentence in Folsom Prison for commissioning the death of his wife, Dawn, the former nurse and sometime egg donor who’d turned on him. With nothing left to lose, Gilchrist tattoos himself with the initials of five people he blames for his fall: Dawn; Leo Manuel Aurelio, the hit man he’d hired to dispose of her; Kaitlyn Todd, the nurse/receptionist who took Dawn’s place; Alex Munsey, whose search for records upset his apple cart; and Ali Reynolds, the TV reporter who’d helped put Alex in touch with the dozen other women who formed the Progeny Project because their children looked just like hers. No matter that Ali’s been out of both California and the news business for years; Gilchrist and his enablers know that revenge can’t possibly be served too cold. Wonder how far down that list they’ll get before Ali, aided once more by Frigg, the methodical but loose-cannon AI first introduced in Duel to the Death (2018), turns on them?
Proficient but eminently predictable. Amid all the time shifts and embedded backstories, the most surprising feature is how little the boundary-challenged AI, who gets into the case more or less inadvertently, differs from your standard human sidekick with issues.Pub Date: April 2, 2019
ISBN: 978-1-5011-5101-9
Page Count: 352
Publisher: Gallery Books/Simon & Schuster
Review Posted Online: Feb. 18, 2019
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 1, 2019
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by Lorna Barrett ‧ RELEASE DATE: Aug. 13, 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
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