McMillan (The White Feather Murders, 2017, etc.) takes so long on the backstory for her new series that the mystery doesn’t...
Two misfits run away from expectations and toward mystery when they try to solve a murder in Depression-era Boston’s hottest new club.
The pressure of being a young lawyer in a proud Italian family has Hamish DeLuca in a cold sweat—literally. Though panic attacks aren’t recognized as a medical problem in the 1930s, Hamish knows all too well that they’re a problem for him, and he hides his embarrassment at not feeling normal by seeking a safe harbor in his cousin Luca Valari’s Boston home. Luca’s excited to see Hamish because Luca’s excited by pretty much everything, which makes him the perfect candidate to open the Flamingo, Boston’s latest nightlife hub. Nor is Hamish the only one who takes refuge beneath Luca’s wing. Regina Van Buren, of the Connecticut Van Burens, escapes her familial home to serve as a secretary for Luca after her boyfriend, Vaughan Vanderlaan, announces their engagement at a garden party before soliciting Reggie’s own thoughts on the matter. Luca treats Reggie like she’s capable, and Hamish, once he meets her, treats her like she’s something special. Reggie and Hamish are both starry-eyed about Luca and the Flamingo, though each has growing concerns about some of Luca’s business associates. When the Flamingo eventually becomes the site for a murder, Reggie’s eager to find the truth. Though she hasn’t solved a crime since finding Jenny Wyatt’s runaway kitten as a kid, Reggie’s self-confidence brings Hamish into the fold, and the two start their apparently ill-informed but ultimately successful quest to find the culprit, even if that means revisiting their hero-worship of Luca.
McMillan (The White Feather Murders, 2017, etc.) takes so long on the backstory for her new series that the mystery doesn’t get underway till the second half. That’s better for readers who are in for the long haul than those who, like the heroine, want to cut to the chase.Pub Date: July 10, 2018
ISBN: 978-0-7852-1692-6
Page Count: 352
Publisher: Thomas Nelson
Review Posted Online: April 30, 2018
Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 15, 2018
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
A top-notch psychological thriller.
In Hoag’s (The 9th Girl, 2013, etc.) latest, talented young newscaster Dana Nolan is left to navigate a psychological maze after escaping a serial killer.
While recuperating at home in Shelby Mills, Indiana, Dana meets her former high school classmates John Villante and Tim Carver. Football hero Tim is ashamed of flunking out of West Point, and now he’s a sheriff’s deputy. After Iraq and Afghanistan tours, John’s home with PTSD, "angry and bitter and dark." Dana survived abduction by serial killer Doc Holiday, but she still suffers from the gruesome attack by "the man who ruined her life, destroyed her career, shattered her sense of self, damaged her brain and her face." What binds the trio is their friend Casey Grant, who's been missing five years, perhaps also a Holiday victim, even if "[t]he odds against that kind of coincidence had to be astronomical." Hoag’s first 100 pages are a gut-wrenching dissection of the aftereffects of traumatic brain injury: Dana is plagued by "[f]ear, panic, grief, and anger" and haunted by fractured memories and nightmares. "Before Dana had believed in the inherent good in people. After Dana knew firsthand their capacity for evil." Impulsive and paranoid, Dana obsesses over linking Casey’s disappearance to Holiday, with her misfiring brain convincing her that "finding the truth about what had happened to Casey [was] her chance of redemption." But then Hoag tosses suspects into the narrative faster than Dana can count: Roger Mercer, Dana’s self-absorbed state senator stepfather; Mack Villante, who left son John with "no memories of his father that didn’t include drunkenness and cruelty"; even Hardy, the hard-bitten, cancer-stricken detective who investigated Casey’s disappearance. Tense, tightly woven, with every minor character, from Dana’s fiercely protective aunt to Mercer’s pudgy campaign chief, ratcheting up the tension, Hoag’s narrative explodes with an unexpected but believable conclusion.
A top-notch psychological thriller.Pub Date: Jan. 13, 2015
ISBN: 978-0-525-95454-5
Page Count: 368
Publisher: Dutton
Review Posted Online: Oct. 22, 2014
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Nov. 1, 2014
One protest from an outraged innocent says it all: “This is America. This is Wyoming.”
Once again, Wyoming game warden Joe Pickett gets mixed up in a killing whose principal suspect is his old friend Nate Romanowski, whose attempts to live off the grid keep breaking down in a series of felony charges.
If Judge Hewitt hadn’t bent over to pick up a spoon that had fallen from his dinner table, the sniper set up nearly a mile from his house in the gated community of the Eagle Mountain Club would have ended his life. As it was, the victim was Sue Hewitt, leaving the judge alive and free to rail and threaten anyone he suspected of the shooting. Incoming Twelve Sleep County Sheriff Brendan Kapelow’s interest in using the case to promote his political ambitions and the judge’s inability to see further than his nose make them the perfect targets for a frame-up of Nate, who just wants to be left alone in the middle of nowhere to train his falcons and help his bride, Liv Brannon, raise their baby, Kestrel. Nor are the sniper, the sheriff, and the judge Nate’s only enemies. Orlando Panfile has been sent to Wyoming by the Sinaloan drug cartel to avenge the deaths of the four assassins whose careers Nate and Joe ended last time out (Wolf Pack, 2019). So it’s up to Joe, with some timely data from his librarian wife, Marybeth, to hire a lawyer for Nate, make sure he doesn’t bust out of jail before his trial, identify the real sniper, who continues to take an active role in the proceedings, and somehow protect him from a killer who regards Nate’s arrest as an unwelcome complication. That’s quite a tall order for someone who can’t shoot straight, who keeps wrecking his state-issued vehicles, and whose appalling mother-in-law, Missy Vankeuren Hand, has returned from her latest European jaunt to suck up all the oxygen in Twelve Sleep County to hustle some illegal drugs for her cancer-stricken sixth husband. But fans of this outstanding series will know better than to place their money against Joe.
One protest from an outraged innocent says it all: “This is America. This is Wyoming.”Pub Date: March 3, 2020
ISBN: 978-0-525-53823-3
Page Count: 368
Publisher: Putnam
Review Posted Online: Jan. 12, 2020
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 1, 2020
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