The abrupt wrap-up is a stretch, but dairy life is rendered so faithfully you can smell the cow pats.
Finally, a mystery that dares to ask which is harder: losing your girl or pretending to be sorry when her new lover becomes the prime suspect in a murder case.
Den Cooper, a copper at rural England’s temporarily understaffed Okehampton Police Station (A Dirty Death, 2000, etc.), is convinced dairyman Gordon Hillcock, owner of Dunsworthy Farm, took time off from his milking chores to shove a pitchfork into widely disliked farmhand Sean O’Farrell. But Den is hardly impartial. Lilah Beardon, his fiancée, has recently thrown him over for Hillcock, and she’s determined to cast blame on just about anybody else, from milk recorder Deirdre Watson, who was officially assessing the dairy output when O’Farrell died, to the youthful animal-rights activists who loathed his cruelty to dogs, badgers, and cows, to his malingering, sexually ignored wife Heather, to a couple of blokes, one of them underage, whom he may have been seducing. When his superior insists he consider these other suspects, Cooper becomes enmeshed in cow disease, farm bankruptcies, illegal dog fights, badger-hunting—and family secrets that may have provided Hillcock with a motive to murder in the form of the reason O’Farrell’s daughter Abigail so closely resembles Hillcock and the outcome of Hillcock’s long-ago bout with chemotherapy.
The abrupt wrap-up is a stretch, but dairy life is rendered so faithfully you can smell the cow pats.Pub Date: June 12, 2003
ISBN: 0-312-30260-6
Page Count: 352
Publisher: Dunne/Minotaur
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 1, 2003
An anodyne visit with Tricia and her friends and enemies hung on a thin mystery.
Too much free time leads a New Hampshire bookseller into yet another case of murder.
Now that Tricia Miles has Pixie Poe and Mr. Everett practically running her bookstore, Haven’t Got a Clue, she finds herself at loose ends. Her wealthy sister, Angelica, who in the guise of Nigela Ricita has invested heavily in making Stoneham a bookish tourist attraction, is entering the amateur competition for the Great Booktown Bake-Off. So Tricia, who’s recently taken up baking as a hobby, decides to join her and spends a lot of time looking for the perfect cupcake recipe. A visit to another bookstore leaves Tricia witnessing a nasty argument between owner Joyce Widman and next-door neighbor Vera Olson over the trimming of tree branches that hang over Joyce’s yard—also overheard by new town police officer Cindy Pearson. After Tricia accepts Joyce’s offer of some produce from her garden, they find Vera skewered by a pitchfork, and when Police Chief Grant Baker arrives, Joyce is his obvious suspect. Ever since Tricia moved to Stoneham, the homicide rate has skyrocketed (Poisoned Pages, 2018, etc.), and her history with Baker is fraught. She’s also become suspicious about the activities at Pets-A-Plenty, the animal shelter where Vera was a dedicated volunteer. Tricia’s offered her expertise to the board, but president Toby Kingston has been less than welcoming. With nothing but baking on her calendar, Tricia has plenty of time to investigate both the murder and her vague suspicions about the shelter. Plenty of small-town friendships and rivalries emerge in her quest for the truth.
An anodyne visit with Tricia and her friends and enemies hung on a thin mystery.Pub Date: Aug. 13, 2019
ISBN: 978-1-9848-0272-9
Page Count: 320
Publisher: Berkley
Review Posted Online: May 26, 2019
Kirkus Reviews Issue: June 15, 2019
A murder is committed in a stalled transcontinental train in the Balkans, and every passenger has a watertight alibi. But Hercule Poirot finds a way.
**Note: This classic Agatha Christie mystery was originally published in England as Murder on the Orient Express, but in the United States as Murder in the Calais Coach. Kirkus reviewed the book in 1934 under the original US title, but we changed the title in our database to the now recognizable title Murder on the Orient Express. This is the only name now known for the book. The reason the US publisher, Dodd Mead, did not use the UK title in 1934 was to avoid confusion with the 1932 Graham Greene novel, Orient Express.
Pub Date: Feb. 28, 1934
ISBN: 978-0062073495
Page Count: -
Publisher: Dodd, Mead
Review Posted Online: Sept. 20, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 1, 1934
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