A fabulous, well-researched whodunit.
A widely disliked, wealthy old woman is found murdered on the grounds of her manicured estate in a crime novel steeped in drama, trauma, and secrets.
In Winslow’s auspicious debut mystery, Faith Wesley, a prominent resident of affluent Lake Forest, Illinois, must have been killed in her garden early in the day; the ground beneath her corpse feels moist from morning dew but not soaked from sprinklers that fire up at 6:45 a.m. Veteran investigating detective Tom Edison notes a “gash the color of crushed pomegranates” on Faith’s pale neck. The estate’s security cameras weren’t working at the time of the murder, and the groundskeeper hasn’t shown up for work yet. Faith’s 40-something daughter, Linda Edwards, treats Tom icily, saying she has to get her 10-year-old daughter to soccer. Faith and Linda had a turbulent relationship, but Linda’s been living at the estate since her messy divorce from a well-known Chicago attorney, who, it’s later revealed, has a reason to want Faith dead. Tom, divorced and recently separated from his live-in partner—they broke up fighting over a cat, as she was pro-feline and he wasn’t—wastes no time sleeping with Linda’s best friend, Nora, who lived with the Wesleys decades ago after her parents died after driving their car into a lagoon—the cause of which has never been established. A lagoon-related mishap looms large in Tom’s life; when he was 13, a speedboat’s collision with a wooden raft in another lagoon caused his friend to nearly drown, and a secret about the crash continues to haunt him. This complex mystery offers much to keep the reader engaged, including compelling, flawed characters; a complicated yet believable plot touching on themes of corruption and class; strong dialogue; and a satisfying ending. The author excels at accurate details, as well—even supplying the correct number of racquetball courts in a well-known Chicago North Shore sports center. Winslow’s use of language throughout also deserves special recognition, as it’s smart, flowing, and often poetic, as when Tom, sharing his past with Nora, notes that “Dark Knowledge had to be guarded, protected like a cracked rib, shielded like an abscess.”
A fabulous, well-researched whodunit.Pub Date: Aug. 11, 2021
ISBN: 978-1-955018-19-7
Page Count: 442
Publisher: Quid Mirum Press
Review Posted Online: Nov. 11, 2021
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 1, 2022
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
Breezy, entertaining characters and a cheeky premise fall prey to too much explanation and an unlikely climax.
An aspiring mystery writer sets out to solve her great-aunt’s murder and inherit an estate.
Twenty-five-year-old Annie Adams has never met her great-aunt Frances, who prefers her small village to busy London. But when a mysterious letter arrives instructing Annie to come to Castle Knoll in Dorset to meet Frances and discuss her role as sole beneficiary of her great-aunt’s estate, Annie can’t resist. Unfortunately, she arrives to find Frances’ worst fears have come true: The elderly woman—who’s been haunted for decades by a fortuneteller’s prediction that this will happen—has been murdered, and her will dictates that she will leave her entire estate to Annie, but only if Annie solves her killing. It’s a cheeky if not exactly believable premise, especially since the local police don’t seem terribly opposed to it. Annie herself is an engaging presence, if a little too blind to the fact that she could be on the killer’s to-do list. Her roll call of suspects is pleasingly long, including but not limited to the local vicar, a one-time paramour of her great-aunt’s; a gardener who grows a lot more than flowers; shady developers and suspicious friends from Frances’ past; and Saxon, Annie’s crafty rival, who inherits the estate himself if he manages to solve the case first. Annie pieces together clues through readings of Frances’ journal, but the story eventually runs aground on the twin rocks of too much explanation and a flimsy climax. Cute dialogue gives way to lengthy exposition, and by the time Frances’ killer is revealed you may well be ready to leave Annie, Dorset, and Castle Knoll behind for the firmer ground of reality. Fans of cozy mysteries are likely to be more forgiving, but if you cast a skeptical eye toward amateur sleuths, this novel won’t change your mind about them.
Breezy, entertaining characters and a cheeky premise fall prey to too much explanation and an unlikely climax.Pub Date: March 26, 2024
ISBN: 9780593474013
Page Count: 368
Publisher: Dutton
Review Posted Online: Feb. 3, 2024
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 1, 2024
Forget about solving all these crimes; the signal triumph here is (spoiler) the heroine’s survival.
Another sweltering month in Charlotte, another boatload of mysteries past and present for overworked, overstressed forensic anthropologist Temperance Brennan.
A week after the night she chases but fails to catch a mysterious trespasser outside her town house, some unknown party texts Tempe four images of a corpse that looks as if it’s been chewed by wild hogs, because it has been. Showboat Medical Examiner Margot Heavner makes it clear that, breaking with her department’s earlier practice (The Bone Collection, 2016, etc.), she has no intention of calling in Tempe as a consultant and promptly identifies the faceless body herself as that of a young Asian man. Nettled by several errors in Heavner’s analysis, and even more by her willingness to share the gory details at a press conference, Tempe launches her own investigation, which is not so much off the books as against the books. Heavner isn’t exactly mollified when Tempe, aided by retired police detective Skinny Slidell and a host of experts, puts a name to the dead man. But the hints of other crimes Tempe’s identification uncovers, particularly crimes against children, spur her on to redouble her efforts despite the new M.E.’s splenetic outbursts. Before he died, it seems, Felix Vodyanov was linked to a passenger ferry that sank in 1994, an even earlier U.S. government project to research biological agents that could control human behavior, the hinky spiritual retreat Sparkling Waters, the dark web site DeepUnder, and the disappearances of at least four schoolchildren, two of whom have also turned up dead. And why on earth was Vodyanov carrying Tempe’s own contact information? The mounting evidence of ever more and ever worse skulduggery will pull Tempe deeper and deeper down what even she sees as a rabbit hole before she confronts a ringleader implicated in “Drugs. Fraud. Breaking and entering. Arson. Kidnapping. How does attempted murder sound?”
Forget about solving all these crimes; the signal triumph here is (spoiler) the heroine’s survival.Pub Date: March 17, 2020
ISBN: 978-1-9821-3888-2
Page Count: 352
Publisher: Scribner
Review Posted Online: Dec. 22, 2019
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 15, 2020
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