of the mystery’s mind-boggling confusion.
Constable Evan Evans of the North Wales Police, a one-man force in tiny Llanfair (Evanly Choirs, 1999, etc.), is intrigued
by the latest venture of his schoolteacher girlfriend Bronwen Price. Along with a few other locals, she’s taking cooking lessons from Madame Yvette Bouchard, owner and chef of the town’s new restaurant Chez Yvette. The restaurant has just begun to take off when it becomes the second victim of the town arsonist—the first a cottage recently bought and renovated by a couple from England. When a man’s body is found in the ashes of this fire, however, arrogant Peter Potter, an arson specialist, is sent to Llanfair by Headquarters. Meanwhile, Evans and his friend Sergeant Watkins try to identify the body—now known to have been stabbed to death before the fire. Trying to get past the victim’s false identity papers (found in his car) and probing Madame Yvette’s past bring to light another restaurant fire, this one in England, and a newspaper report on the death, years ago, of Yvette’s sea-loving husband. The information collected sends the intrepid pair to France for a short stay that discloses some choice truths about Madame Yvette, though occasional references to drug-runners off the Welsh coast do keep muddying the waters. Evans and the denizens of Llanfair continue to charm and amuse, but this time they’re the victims, along with the reader,
of the mystery’s mind-boggling confusion.Pub Date: Feb. 1, 2000
ISBN: 0-312-25244-7
Page Count: 288
Publisher: Minotaur
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 15, 2000
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
All these problems are handsomely solved at the unsurprising cost of making the human characters less interesting than the...
Just when you thought you’d seen a detective in every guise imaginable, here comes one in sheep’s clothing.
For years, George Glenn hasn’t been close to anyone but his sheep. Everyday he lets them out, pastures them, reads to them and brings them safely back home to his barn in the guilelessly named Irish village of Glennkill. Now George lies dead, pinned to the ground by a spade. Although his flock haven’t had much experience with this sort of thing, they’re determined to bring his killer to justice. There are of course several obstacles, and debut novelist Swann deals with them in appealingly matter-of-fact terms. Sheep can’t talk to people; they can only listen in on conversations between George’s widow Kate and Bible-basher Beth Jameson. Not even the smartest of them, Othello, Miss Maple (!) and Mopple the Whale, can understand much of what the neighborhood priest is talking about, except that his name is evidently God. They’re afraid to confront suspects like butcher Abraham Rackham and Gabriel O’Rourke, the Gaelic-speaking charmer who’s raising a flock for slaughter. And even after a series of providential discoveries and brainwaves reveals the answer to the riddle, they don’t know how to tell the Glennkill citizenry.
All these problems are handsomely solved at the unsurprising cost of making the human characters less interesting than the sheep. But the sustained tone of straight-faced wonderment is magical.Pub Date: June 5, 2007
ISBN: 978-0-385-52111-6
Page Count: 368
Publisher: Flying Dolphin/Doubleday
Review Posted Online: June 24, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: April 15, 2007
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
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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