The three Samuelson sisters are brought together to solve a series of puzzles after the untimely death of their mother and bring light to the mystery of her demise as well as a string of peculiar murders.
With the help of infantile, mother-of-two sister Rachel and rigid detective sister Sally, not to mention a cute teddy bear that their mother, Mattie, had been stitching before her drowning, big sister Heather finds clues that lead her to believe that her mother had been looking to put a stop to the strange deaths that had been occurring in her Oregon community. Eickelberg, a native Oregonian, uses crafty tricks as she delves into the minds of three sisters who are intent on finding out what the mysterious message tucked inside the stuffed animal has to do with the inexplicable drowning of their mother. Brainteasers mark the end of each chapter, and the author, an avid lover of riddles, invites readers to submit to unconventional word games and challenges that give way to clues about what comes next. Using comical imagery to describe the senior citizens at her mother’s residence, the frightening—but sexy—biker who is suddenly interested in their case and other strange people in the community, Eickelberg covertly guides the “Samuelson Sleuths” along their way as the sisters frequent their mother’s senior center and its surrounding neighborhood in hopes of unearthing a secret and unveiling a killer. Charmingly, cunningly twisting and turning, the story centers around the curious teddy bear and guides readers toward a clever conclusion that they can almost veer toward on their own. The brainteasers and puzzles are fun and easy, but serve as a slight distraction to a fun and easy read. The most enjoyable part is dissecting the puzzles to find out their part in the deaths that have been taking place. Eickelberg’s bizarre characters and thought-provoking puzzles will keep mystery fans turning the pages.
Pub Date: July 27, 2011
ISBN: 978-1458200099
Page Count: 244
Publisher: Abbott
Review Posted Online: Jan. 19, 2012
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
Proficient but eminently predictable. Amid all the time shifts and embedded backstories, the most surprising feature is how...
A convicted killer’s list of five people he wants dead runs the gamut from the wife he’s already had murdered to franchise heroine Ali Reynolds.
Back in the day, women came from all over to consult Santa Clarita fertility specialist Dr. Edward Gilchrist. Many of them left his care happily pregnant, never dreaming that the father of the babies they carried was none other than the physician himself, who donated his own sperm rather than that of the handsome, athletic, disease-free men pictured in his scrapbook. When Alexandra Munsey’s son, Evan, is laid low by the kidney disease he’s inherited from his biological father and she returns to Gilchrist in search of the donor’s medical records, the roof begins to fall in on him. By the time it’s done falling, he’s serving a life sentence in Folsom Prison for commissioning the death of his wife, Dawn, the former nurse and sometime egg donor who’d turned on him. With nothing left to lose, Gilchrist tattoos himself with the initials of five people he blames for his fall: Dawn; Leo Manuel Aurelio, the hit man he’d hired to dispose of her; Kaitlyn Todd, the nurse/receptionist who took Dawn’s place; Alex Munsey, whose search for records upset his apple cart; and Ali Reynolds, the TV reporter who’d helped put Alex in touch with the dozen other women who formed the Progeny Project because their children looked just like hers. No matter that Ali’s been out of both California and the news business for years; Gilchrist and his enablers know that revenge can’t possibly be served too cold. Wonder how far down that list they’ll get before Ali, aided once more by Frigg, the methodical but loose-cannon AI first introduced in Duel to the Death (2018), turns on them?
Proficient but eminently predictable. Amid all the time shifts and embedded backstories, the most surprising feature is how little the boundary-challenged AI, who gets into the case more or less inadvertently, differs from your standard human sidekick with issues.Pub Date: April 2, 2019
ISBN: 978-1-5011-5101-9
Page Count: 352
Publisher: Gallery Books/Simon & Schuster
Review Posted Online: Feb. 18, 2019
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 1, 2019
A smoothly written contemporary caper paired with a murder mystery and a little meet-the-Jetsons futurism. No one does...
Written under her real name and her pseudonym, two books in one from megaselling Roberts/Robb.
Book one: Laine Tavish, gorgeous redhead and owner of a small-town antique store, isn’t about to tell the cops that she knew the old man who was hit by a car right outside her shop. Just before he took his dying breath, she recognized Willy Young, partner in crime to Big Jack O’Hara, her father. Their biggest heist: millions of dollars in hot diamonds. Her father went to prison, but not Willy, whose last words were “left it for you.” What did he leave—and where? Enter Max Gannon, insurance investigator and all-around stud, with thick, wavy, run-your-fingers-through-it hair, tawny eyes that remind Laine of a tiger, and a delicious Georgia drawl. He beds Laine pronto, and they solve the case. But some of the diamonds are still missing. . . . Book two: it’s 50 years later, and New York traffic is slower than ever: just try getting a helicab on a rainy day. But Samantha Gannon, author of a bestseller called Hot Rocks based on her grandparents’ experiences in the long-ago case, eventually makes it home from the airport to find her house-sitter Andrea dead, throat cut. Another investigation begins, spearheaded by Eve Dallas, a tough-talking but very appealing New York cop married to Roarke, a rich, eccentric genius who just barely manages to stay on the right side of the law. Is the murderer after the rest of the diamonds? And is he or she related to the master thief who betrayed Samantha’s great-grandfather? There are more burning questions, and Eve wants answers—but, first, get Central on the telelink and program the Autochef for pastrami on rye.
A smoothly written contemporary caper paired with a murder mystery and a little meet-the-Jetsons futurism. No one does Suspense Lite better than Nora.Pub Date: Sept. 1, 2003
ISBN: 0-399-15106-0
Page Count: 448
Publisher: Putnam
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 15, 2003
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