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
Nearly as many recipes as Joy of Cooking, and about as much narrative.
A baker helps solve her sister’s boyfriend’s classmate’s murder.
Hannah Swensen is suffering from stress due to a trauma incurred in her last adventure (Chocolate Cream Pie Murder, 2019) but alluded to only in the most elliptical terms in her current entry. Hannah’s stepfather, Doc Knight, is adamant: She must leave at once for vacation. He sends Hannah and her mom off to California for a stress-free holiday helping Hannah’s college friend Lynne Larchmont pack up her palatial home and move back to Lake Eden, Minnesota, where Hannah’s shop, The Cookie Jar, provides sweet treats for all. A New York minute after she arrives in Los Angeles, Hannah receives a hysterical call from her sister, Michelle. Michelle’s boyfriend, Lonnie, is the main suspect in the murder of Darcy Hicks, an old friend from high school. Since Lonnie is one of Lake Eden’s handful of police detectives, everyone else on the force is deemed ineligible to conduct the investigation, leaving only amateur sleuth Hannah to crack the case. Hannah moves back in, platonically of course, with her old flame Norman Rhodes, since her Lake Eden condo was the scene of that unspecified trauma and her husband, Ross Barton, has disappeared, or died, or maybe killed somebody—it’s not quite clear which. Hannah begins her investigation by checking out Brian and Cassie Polinski, who were with Darcy and Lonnie at the Double Eagle, a dive bar, the night of her death. But it’s hard for her inquiry to build up any steam because almost every chapter ends with copious directions for making another nifty treat, complete with tips on which brands to use, advice about where to buy the ingredients, and little anecdotes about the people who feast on the finished products.
Nearly as many recipes as Joy of Cooking, and about as much narrative.Pub Date: Feb. 25, 2020
ISBN: 978-1-4967-1889-1
Page Count: 304
Publisher: Kensington
Review Posted Online: Nov. 24, 2019
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Dec. 15, 2019
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
A conflicted protagonist battles formidable opponents in a bid for a normal life.
A Boston area librarian’s love for her best friend’s child holds out the best hope for sustaining her otherwise disastrous life.
Hester Thursby lives with her veterinarian boyfriend, Morgan, and Kate, his twin sister Daphne’s child. Every day, Hester pretends to drop Kate at school on the way to her job at Harvard University, but it’s been a month since she’s done either. After almost dying while using her research skills to find a missing person (Little Comfort, 2018), she’s become unnaturally fearful about Kate’s safety since Daphne, her closest friend, walked out of their lives. Meanwhile, a group of friends on a Maine island are dealing with a love triangle, missing children, and drugs. Luckless Finisterre Island police officer Rory Dunbar is in love with his childhood friend, Lydia, whose husband, a state cop, is unfaithful and possibly crooked. Added to that dynamic is Annie, who’s squatting in a deserted Victorian house beloved of drug addicts and other lost souls. Lydia’s son, Oliver, disappears, and after Rory finds him asleep on a boat, a whispering campaign claims that he took the boy himself so he could play the hero. Next to go missing just as a powerful storm arrives is Ethan, the 4-year-old son of drug addict Frankie Sullivan. When Lydia and her friend and lover, Vaughn Roberts, are swept into a raging ravine while searching for Ethan, Annie volunteers to be lowered on a rope to help save them. Overwhelmed by events, Annie texts Hester, who leaves with Kate for Finisterre, where Daphne’s nowhere to be found. Hester, uncertain whom to trust, risks her relationship and her life as her search for Daphne uncovers dangerous secrets.
A conflicted protagonist battles formidable opponents in a bid for a normal life.Pub Date: Aug. 27, 2019
ISBN: 978-1-4967-1933-1
Page Count: 304
Publisher: Kensington
Review Posted Online: May 26, 2019
Kirkus Reviews Issue: June 15, 2019
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