Hip, slick, and surprisingly deft: a strangely uplifting tale of perfectly dreadful people.
A Dublin novelist/film editor debuts here with a taut, richly understated crime thriller, the first in a series, about a bad man trapped in his own dark world.
Harry Fielding is one of those useful bastards you don’t want to get too close to. An “understrapper” (i.e., gofer) at Britain’s MI5, Harry is so shady even his own boss doesn’t like to take phone calls from him. But when there’s a nasty bit of work to be attended to—be it blackmail, eavesdropping, money-laundering, or simple violence—Harry’s your man. Given his line of work, it’s understandable that Harry hasn’t an abundance of friends. He lives alone and subsists mainly on airline meals that he buys in bulk. Nonetheless, he manages to become friendly with Lisa Talbot, his next-door neighbor, whom Harry witnessing murdering her brother-in-law one night. As a kindred spirit, Harry declines to turn her in, but Lisa is caught all the same and packed off to jail. Later, Harry is sent to take photographs of a cabinet minister in flagrante delicto with his young mistress. Unfortunately, he ends up taking snaps of a murder instead—since the cabinet minister goes rather overboard this time and stabs the girl to death. All in a day’s work, of course: Harry checks in with the office and is told to help the man hush the business up. So the cabinet minister gets hustled back home and the poor girl’s body is dealt with as discreetly as Harry can manage. He doesn’t let on about the photos, however—yet. Eventually Harry meets and falls in love (or at least goes to bed) with Maureen Talbot, Lisa’s sister. Lisa had killed Maureen’s husband because he’d been beating Maureen mercilessly; now Maureen feels terrible that Lisa is languishing behind bars on her account. If only there were some way to help—which is to say, if only Harry had a heart. Perhaps his training as a blackmailer will come in useful after all—unless the cabinet minister is smarter than Harry. It’s a close call.
Hip, slick, and surprisingly deft: a strangely uplifting tale of perfectly dreadful people.Pub Date: June 25, 2002
ISBN: 0-14-200208-9
Page Count: 224
Publisher: Penguin
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 1, 2002
BOOK REVIEW
Fluke’s latest puzzler boasts 25 recipes and even more surprises.
A cruise may be romantic for Lake Eden’s Lutheran minister and his wife, but it’s murder for Hannah Swensen (Gingerbread Cookie Murder, 2010, etc.) and her pals.
Now that his childhood friend Matthew Walters has taken over his pastoral duties for two weeks, Rev. Bob Knudson can finally take his bride Claire on a belated honeymoon. Grandma Knudson’s willing to look after Matthew, just as she did when he and his cousin Paul stayed in Lake Eden as a teenager. And she’s even willing to keep an eye on Pete Nunke’s mynah, who’s staying in the rectory while Pete recovers from back surgery. Of course Hannah keeps Grandma Knudson well stocked with Butterscotch Bonanza Bars and Nutmeg Snaps from The Cookie Jar, her coffee shop. But when one of Hannah’s visits ends with the discovery of Matthew’s body face down in a piece of Red Devil’s Food Cake (recipe included), she leaves Grandma Knudson in the care of Clara and Marguerite Hollenbeck to stalk a killer. Hannah’s partner Lisa Beeseman entertains customers with tales of the grisly find while Hannah enlists sisters Andrea and Michelle to question potential suspects. They even stop at the skuzzy Eagle roadhouse to question Lenny Peske about the dollar coin he gave Lisa as a tip. Hannah’s main partner-in-crime-prevention, Norman Rhodes, on the other hand, has seemed strangely preoccupied ever since his ex-fiancée, Beverly Thorndike, joined his dental practice. Will Claire and Bob’s idyllic adventure spell romantic disaster for Lake Eden’s premier sleuth?
Fluke’s latest puzzler boasts 25 recipes and even more surprises.Pub Date: March 1, 2011
ISBN: 978-0-7582-3491-9
Page Count: 304
Publisher: Kensington
Review Posted Online: April 4, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 15, 2011
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
Don’t be fooled by the brand-new packaging. If you liked Rosenfelt’s rollicking previous series, you’ll like this one too.
The creator of Paterson attorney Andy Carpenter’s dog-friendly mysteries launches a new series starring several of Andy’s friends and enemies, including the canine client he represented in Dachshund Through the Snow (2019), with a supporting role for Andy himself.
Judge Henry “Hatchet” Henderson, whose courtroom has provided the arena for so many of Andy’s shenanigans, is threatened with blackmail, and he wants the newly formed K Team—retired cop Corey Douglas; his canine partner, Simon Garfunkel; Andy’s fearsome investigator, Marcus Clark; and Andy’s wife, Laurie Collins—to identify and neutralize the threat, which he plans to keep confidential by paying Andy a dollar to take the case as his lawyer. At first the team’s inquiries into which of Henderson’s recent cases (the manslaughter conviction of ex-boxer John Lowry? The freeing of self-confessed embezzler Nina Williams on a legal technicality? The acquittal of Ponzi-scheming broker Drew Lockman?) provoked the blackmail lead nowhere. Then they lead to hints of a financial manipulation conspiracy on a grand scale. By the time they lead to Equi-net, an electronic communications network that handles securities trades for people who’d like to keep them private, five people have been murdered, with more slated to follow. The one place they don’t lead is to continued confidentiality, as Henderson learns to his sorrow. The net of deceptions, double-crosses, and professional assassinations gets pretty knotty, but although the conspiracy involves an awful lot of guilty parties, the gimmick behind all their criminal activity is appealingly simple. Through it all, Corey serves as an investigator and narrator every bit as ebullient as Andy and a lot more diligent. In fact, longtime fans may wonder why Rosenfelt saw the need to create a new series that follows the pattern of Andy’s 20 successful cases so closely. If he thought Paterson needed more wiseacre crime fighters, he was undoubtedly right.
Don’t be fooled by the brand-new packaging. If you liked Rosenfelt’s rollicking previous series, you’ll like this one too.Pub Date: March 24, 2020
ISBN: 978-1-250-25719-2
Page Count: 304
Publisher: Minotaur
Review Posted Online: Dec. 22, 2019
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 15, 2020
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