The uneven plotting would benefit from tightening, but May’s sense of place is as good as it gets.
The death of her husband in a car explosion in Paris sends a woman searching for answers in the Hebrides in this expansive thriller.
By land or sea, transport to the Scottish Hebrides can be fiercely turbulent. This latest from prolific May (Coffin Road, 2017, etc.) offers smooth armchair travel to the dramatic and haunting location—and a mostly good mystery. The story begins at a textile fair in Paris as Hebrides natives Niamh and Ruairidh Macfarlane market Ranish tweed, their variation on iconic Harris tweed. Together for 10 years, the couple appear headed to dissolution. When Niamh sees Ruairidh leave their hotel with a woman she suspects is his mistress, she tracks them into the street, where their car explodes, killing both of them. Police initially, but briefly, see the earmarks of terrorism. Soon the investigators abandon that tack, and Niamh returns home to bury the pieces of Ruairidh’s shattered body. Here, May explores the couple’s past lives in a series of richly written, but perhaps discursive, flashbacks that often leave the mystery hanging and turn the work into a novel of two people growing up, courting, and coming together in the remote location. Painful and tragic events and relationships among family and friends become the focus. The characters—Niamh’s parents, a local police investigator, a vicious fashion designer, a childhood friend of Niamh’s who becomes a troubled adult—are animated by May’s sharp, perceptive details. The unraveling of the car bombing is not as fresh or as tight as the wrap-up to cases in some of May’s other works, though most readers will likely find the final revelation startling and satisfying. What remain consistent are May’s keen, perceptive descriptions of the Hebrides, where “jagged black rock…[stands] stubborn against the relentless power of the Atlantic.”
The uneven plotting would benefit from tightening, but May’s sense of place is as good as it gets.Pub Date: March 6, 2018
ISBN: 978-1-68144-093-4
Page Count: 304
Publisher: Mobius
Review Posted Online: Dec. 23, 2017
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 15, 2018
A meticulously built mystery that follows a careful ascent toward a breaking point that will leave you breathless. It’s...
A dark, still figure, wearing long black robes and a hood, appears on the charming village green of Three Pines, a small Québec town; though at first it seems scary but harmless, it turns out to be something much more sinister.
The strange figure’s appearance coincides with a Halloween party at the local bistro, attended by the usual villagers but also four out-of-town guests. They are friends from the Université de Montréal who meet for a yearly reunion at the B&B in Three Pines. But this event actually happened months ago, and village resident Armand Gamache, now head of the Sûreté du Québec, is recounting the story from the witness stand in a courtroom suffering from oppressive summer heat. Gamache’s testimony becomes narrative, explaining how over the course of a few days the masked man grew into a fixture on the village green and morphed slowly into an omen. Gamache’s son-in-law and second-in-command, Jean-Guy Beauvoir, is asked to research the “dark thing’s” back story after one of the B&B guests, a journalist, mentions that the figure reminds him of story he did on an old Spanish tradition, that of the “debt collector.” It becomes clear, as Gamache relays the events leading up to murder, that “someone in the village had done something so horrific that a Conscience had been called.” But did the dark thing come for a villager or for one of their guests? Conscience is an overarching theme in Penny’s latest, seeping into the courtroom narrative as Gamache grapples with an enemy much larger than the dark thing, a war he took on as the new Chief Superintendent. His victory depends on the outcome, and the path, of this murder trial. While certain installments in Penny’s bestselling series take Gamache and his team to the far reaches of Québec, others build their tension not with a chase but instead in the act of keeping still—this is one such book. The tension has never been greater, and Gamache has sat for months waiting, and waiting, to act, with Conscience watching close by.
A meticulously built mystery that follows a careful ascent toward a breaking point that will leave you breathless. It’s Three Pines as you have never seen it before.Pub Date: Aug. 29, 2017
ISBN: 978-1-250-06619-0
Page Count: 400
Publisher: Minotaur
Review Posted Online: June 5, 2017
Kirkus Reviews Issue: June 15, 2017
The real-life events of the War of the Currents are exciting enough without embroidery. Still, readers who care more about...
The great tech innovators of the '90s—that’s the 1890s—posture, plot, and even plan murder in this business book–turned–costume drama.
In the late 19th century, as Thomas Edison and George Westinghouse began wiring America for electricity, the titans locked horns over which electrical standard would prevail—AC or DC—in a struggle that came to be known as the “War of the Currents.” Novelist (The Sherlockian, 2010) and screenwriter (The Imitation Game, 2014) Moore chops up and rearranges a decade’s worth of events, squeezes them into two years, adds a few crimes, and serves the result up in a lively if unsurprising legal thriller. He tells the story from the point of view of Paul Cravath, the young attorney charged with defending Westinghouse against a potentially devastating patent suit brought by Edison. The key to winning, Cravath decides, is to get Nikola Tesla—the mad scientist to end all mad scientists—to invent a better lightbulb. Subtle this isn’t. A devastating lab fire! An inexplicable disappearance! A beautiful diva with a mysterious past! An attempted murder! An electrocuted dog! The characters mug and posture like actors in a silent film with dramatic captions: “She turned her glare to Westinghouse. 'You’re a co-conspirator in this villainy?' " Tesla, a Serbian, talks funny: “My accent is wide. Perhaps you have been noticing.” Eventually, inspired by the innovative business practices of Westinghouse and Edison, Cravath invents the 20th-century law firm and wins the hand of the lady.
The real-life events of the War of the Currents are exciting enough without embroidery. Still, readers who care more about atmosphere than accuracy will enjoy this breezy melodrama.Pub Date: Aug. 16, 2016
ISBN: 978-0-812-98890-1
Page Count: 400
Publisher: Random House
Review Posted Online: July 2, 2016
Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 15, 2016
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