Indefatigable Torie may irk her men, but her exploits do keep you amused.
A small Mississippi river town is the unlikely site of a Mafia vendetta.
Genealogist and super-snoop Torie O’Shea is settling into her role as head of the New Kassel Historical Society after inheriting Gaheimer House, its headquarters and a good deal of money (Thicker Than Water, 2005). Her stepfather, Colin Brooke, is running for mayor against incumbent Bill Castlereagh, and when journalist Sam Hill, no friend of the mayor, asks Torie to investigate the genealogy of them both, she discovers that there’s something distinctly odd about Castlereagh’s. In the meantime, a Chicago Mafioso checks into the local B&B, a body falls off a parade float at the feet of Torie’s teenaged daughter and motorcyclists shoot at hayride passengers enjoying the fall festival. Closer to home, Torie overhears her husband repeatedly congratulated for getting her to move out of town, where her snoopy, bossy ways might be tempered, or at least muffled. The sheriff’s new deputy, who seems to have taken an instant dislike to Torie, keeps especially close watch on her when her next-door neighbors, the mayor and his wife, vanish. And when her research into the mayor’s family tree finally turns up a Mafia connection, she must survive threats from the mob before she can help solve the case and put her marriage on a new course.
Indefatigable Torie may irk her men, but her exploits do keep you amused.Pub Date: April 27, 2006
ISBN: 0-312-33410-9
Page Count: 240
Publisher: Minotaur
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 15, 2006
More of a western than a mystery, like most of Joe’s adventures, and all the better for the open physical clashes that...
Wyoming Game and Fish Warden Joe Pickett (Free Fire, 2007, etc.), once again at the governor’s behest, stalks the wraithlike figure who’s targeting elk hunters for death.
Frank Urman was taken down by a single rifle shot, field-dressed, beheaded and hung upside-down to bleed out. (You won’t believe where his head eventually turns up.) The poker chip found near his body confirms that he’s the third victim of the Wolverine, a killer whose animus against hunters is evidently being whipped up by anti-hunting activist Klamath Moore. The potential effects on the state’s hunting revenues are so calamitous that Governor Spencer Rulon pulls out all the stops, and Pickett is forced to work directly with Wyoming Game and Fish Director Randy Pope, the boss who fired him from his regular job in Saddlestring District. Three more victims will die in rapid succession before Joe is given a more congenial colleague: Nate Romanowski, the outlaw falconer who pledged to protect Joe’s family before he was taken into federal custody. As usual in this acclaimed series, the mystery is slight and its solution eminently guessable long before it’s confirmed by testimony from an unlikely source. But the people and scenes and enduring conflicts that lead up to that solution will stick with you for a long time.
More of a western than a mystery, like most of Joe’s adventures, and all the better for the open physical clashes that periodically release the tension between the scheming adversaries.Pub Date: May 20, 2008
ISBN: 978-0-399-15488-1
Page Count: 320
Publisher: Putnam
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 15, 2008
This ran in the S.E.P. and resulted in more demands for the story in book form than ever recorded. Well, here it is and it is a honey. Imagine ten people, not knowing each other, not knowing why they were invited on a certain island house-party, not knowing their hosts. Then imagine them dead, one by one, until none remained alive, nor any clue to the murderer. Grand suspense, a unique trick, expertly handled.
Pub Date: Feb. 21, 1939
ISBN: 0062073478
Page Count: 272
Publisher: Dodd, Mead
Review Posted Online: Sept. 20, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 1, 1939
SEEN & HEARD
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