Another example of why Lovesey’s Diamond series (The Vault, 2000, etc.) sets awards committees tingling. Fully dimensional...
About to be shunted off to Bristol and replaced as the head of Bath’s Murder Squad on the eve of his 50th birthday, irascible Peter Diamond is gleeful at the reprieve a body found in Royal Victoria Park buys him—until he gets a good look and realizes it’s his own wife Stephanie with two bullet holes in her head. To prevent bias, DCI Curtis McGarvie is put in charge of the investigation, and Diamond soon finds himself, as the husband, the prime suspect. Appalled, grieving, and determined to bring his beloved Steph’s killer to justice, Diamond mounts an unofficial parallel investigation, concentrating on miscreants he’s jailed. Then, weeks later, another cop’s wife, an ex-cop herself, is declared missing, then found dead along the rail tracks in Woking with wounds similar to Steph’s. Diamond allies himself with the other widower, Stormy Weathers, and the two track cases and villains they worked on together at the Met. Along the way, they find ties between a diamond snatch planned for the Dorchester Hotel and Steph’s first husband, ex-RAF caterer Edward Dixon-Bligh; then the body of Dixon-Bligh himself with his tongue cut out, possibly for ratting out the Dorchester deal. All signs point to the heroin-addicted Dixon-Bligh as killer of both wives, but Diamond, stymied by his unbreakable alibi, begins digging more deeply into the Weathers marriage, with catastrophic revelations.
Another example of why Lovesey’s Diamond series (The Vault, 2000, etc.) sets awards committees tingling. Fully dimensional characters, juicy plotting, and more twists than the Hampton Court maze.Pub Date: June 1, 2001
ISBN: 1-56947-291-2
Page Count: 352
Publisher: Soho
Review Posted Online: June 24, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 1, 2002
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
A murder is committed in a stalled transcontinental train in the Balkans, and every passenger has a watertight alibi. But Hercule Poirot finds a way.
**Note: This classic Agatha Christie mystery was originally published in England as Murder on the Orient Express, but in the United States as Murder in the Calais Coach. Kirkus reviewed the book in 1934 under the original US title, but we changed the title in our database to the now recognizable title Murder on the Orient Express. This is the only name now known for the book. The reason the US publisher, Dodd Mead, did not use the UK title in 1934 was to avoid confusion with the 1932 Graham Greene novel, Orient Express.
Pub Date: Feb. 28, 1934
ISBN: 978-0062073495
Page Count: -
Publisher: Dodd, Mead
Review Posted Online: Sept. 20, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 1, 1934
The parts with Nero Wolfe, the only character Goldsborough brings to life, are almost worth waiting for.
In Archie Goodwin's 15th adventure since the death of his creator, Rex Stout, his gossipy Aunt Edna Wainwright lures him from 34th Street to his carefully unnamed hometown in Ohio to investigate the death of a well-hated bank president.
Tom Blankenship, the local police chief, thinks there’s no case since Logan Mulgrew shot himself. But Archie’s mother, Marjorie Goodwin, and Aunt Edna know lots of people with reason to have killed him. Mulgrew drove rival banker Charles Purcell out of business, forcing Purcell to get work as an auto mechanic, and foreclosed on dairy farmer Harold Mapes’ spread. Lester Newman is convinced that Mulgrew murdered his ailing wife, Lester’s sister, so that he could romance her nurse, Carrie Yeager. And Donna Newman, Lester’s granddaughter, might have had an eye on her great-uncle’s substantial estate. Nor is Archie limited to mulling over his relatives’ gossip, for Trumpet reporter Verna Kay Padgett, whose apartment window was shot out the night her column raised questions about the alleged suicide, is perfectly willing to publish a floridly actionable summary of the leading suspects that delights her editor, shocks Archie, and infuriates everyone else. The one person missing is Archie’s boss, Nero Wolfe (Death of an Art Collector, 2019, etc.), and fans will breathe a sigh of relief when he appears at Marjorie’s door, debriefs Archie, notices a telltale clue, prepares dinner for everyone, sleeps on his discovery, and arranges a meeting of all parties in Marjorie’s living room in which he names the killer.
The parts with Nero Wolfe, the only character Goldsborough brings to life, are almost worth waiting for.Pub Date: May 19, 2020
ISBN: 978-1-5040-5988-6
Page Count: 248
Publisher: Mysterious Press
Review Posted Online: March 1, 2020
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 15, 2020
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