Not the best of Robinson’s many Yorkshire mysteries but one of the most heartfelt.
An unexpected discovery sends Detective Superintendent Alan Banks and his Eastvale crew back to investigate a murder that may or may not have involved the Yorkshire Ripper’s last victim back in 1980.
Combing a parcel of land marked as the site of a new shopping mall for evidence of Roman ruins, archaeologist Grace Hutchinson finds some decidedly more recent remains: the skeleton of a man killed only four or five years ago. The roots of the unknown victim’s death go back even further to the murder of Leeds University senior Alice Poole, a political activist who was killed only a few weeks after the Ripper claimed his last known victim. Was she another casualty of the Ripper, or was her killer someone closer to her? Her schoolmate, downstairs neighbor, and ex-boyfriend, Nicholas Hartley, who comes under suspicion from investigating officers DI Stuart Glassco and DC Christopher Marley in 1980, himself suspects Mark Woodcroft, the lover who replaced him before going AWOL, perhaps to Paris. Back in 2019, Banks, along with DS Winsome Jackman and a group of forensic techs, struggles to identify the anonymous victim. Harold Gillespie, who owned the site of Grace Hutchinson’s discovery at the time of the burial, naturally professes to know nothing about the dead man and points out that he would hardly have buried a man he killed on his own property. But the news that Gillespie is himself a retired police officer leads to a chain of further discoveries. Robinson, who died last October, zigzags deftly back and forth between present and past en route to an anticlimactic solution and a truly devastating last sentence.
Not the best of Robinson’s many Yorkshire mysteries but one of the most heartfelt.Pub Date: April 11, 2023
ISBN: 9780062994981
Page Count: 368
Publisher: Morrow/HarperCollins
Review Posted Online: Feb. 7, 2023
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 1, 2023
Soapy, suspenseful fun.
A remembered horror plunges a pregnant woman into a waking nightmare.
Tegan Werner, 23, barely recalls her one-night stand with married real estate developer Simon Lamar; she only learns Simon’s name after seeing him on the local news five months later. Simon wants nothing to do with the resulting child Tegan now carries and tells his lawyer to negotiate a nondisclosure agreement. A destitute Tegan is all too happy to trade her silence for cash—until a whiff of Simon’s cologne triggers a memory of him drugging and raping her. Distraught and eight months pregnant, Tegan flees her Lewiston, Maine, apartment and drives north in a blizzard, intending to seek comfort and counsel from her older brother, Dennis; instead, she gets lost and crashes, badly injuring her ankle. Tegan is terrified when hulking stranger Hank Thompson stops and extricates her from the wreck, and becomes even more so when he takes her to his cabin rather than the hospital, citing hazardous road conditions. Her anxiety eases somewhat upon meeting Hank’s wife, Polly—a former nurse who settles Tegan in a basement hospital room originally built for Polly’s now-deceased mother. Polly vows to call 911 as soon as the phones and power return, but when that doesn’t happen, Tegan becomes convinced that Hank is forcing Polly to hold her prisoner. Tegan doesn’t know the half of it. McFadden unspools her twisty tale via a first-person-present narration that alternates between Tegan and Polly, grounding character while elevating tension. Coincidence and frustratingly foolish assumptions fuel the plot, but readers able to suspend disbelief are in for a wild ride. A purposefully ambiguous, forward-flashing prologue hints at future homicide, establishing stakes from the jump.
Soapy, suspenseful fun.Pub Date: Jan. 28, 2025
ISBN: 9781464227325
Page Count: 384
Publisher: Poisoned Pen
Review Posted Online: Feb. 1, 2025
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 1, 2025
BOOK REVIEW
Lapena’s talents shine in this irresistible novel about revenge, betrayal, and secrets.
So many suspects, so little evidence in Lapena’s latest tale of domestic suspense.
Busy mom Bryden Frost doesn’t see it coming after a morning fender bender involving a Tesla and its charming owner, Derek Gardner, sets her on a collision course with fate. Or does it? Just as in her other fast-moving, women-centric novels, including her breakout The Couple Next Door (2016), Lapena’s female protagonists appear to be living normal lives that some people might even envy—at least at first. When Bryden’s husband, Sam, returns home from work in Albany, New York, to find her missing but her purse and phone still in their apartment, a police investigation ensues. Did Bryden run away? Was she kidnapped? Or could she still be somewhere in the building? Sam is the prime suspect until police Det. Jayne Salter and her team hear from a source that Bryden was having an affair with Derek, something he denies. As Lapena builds her twisty plot, we soon see that these two men aren’t the only people who could be responsible for Bryden’s disappearance. Her sister, Lizzie, who has always been jealous of Bryden, has an addiction she’s hiding from the police, and Bryden’s best friend, Paige, carries a damaging secret as well. And what about the neighbor who was recently accused but not charged with kidnapping and raping a woman? Lapena excavates everyone’s secrets, exposing what’s really going on in the lives of Bryden’s family and friends. None of it is pretty. Lapena’s timely tale mixes the formidable dangers involved with online true-crime addiction with classic police work in a story that will make you wonder what secrets your family and friends are hiding and who, if anyone, you really know or can trust.
Lapena’s talents shine in this irresistible novel about revenge, betrayal, and secrets.Pub Date: July 29, 2025
ISBN: 9780593832448
Page Count: 352
Publisher: Pamela Dorman/Viking
Review Posted Online: May 3, 2025
Kirkus Reviews Issue: June 1, 2025
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