A colorful mystery based on historical events that focuses on the status of women.
A former detective is inspired by the suffragist movement to return to the job she loved.
Molly Murphy Sullivan and her husband, Daniel, the newly created FBI head in 1909 New York, live with their adopted daughter, Bridie, and two younger children on Patchin Place, a dead-end street in Greenwich Village. Across the street live Molly’s closest friends, Elena "Sid" Goldfarb and Augusta “Gus” Walcott, both from society families, both with independent means, both lesbians, suffragists, and socialists who are paying for Bridie to attend private school. Now Sid and Gus, who are hosting a Boston Walcott cousin and a fellow Vassar graduate, are concerned because Willa Parker, a third expected guest who’s a scientist from Philadelphia, hasn’t arrived. Even though they suspect Willa may not want to be found, Sid and Gus hire Molly to find her. Willa is far smarter than her husband, but because she’s a woman, his name is on their scholarly papers and he’s in control of their research at Penn University. Molly is especially inclined to take the case because she’s peeved with Daniel, who hasn’t told her that he hasn’t been paid by the FBI and is using their savings to pay his men. Meanwhile, the city is getting ready for a celebration of the 300 years since Henry Hudson sailed up the river now named for him and 100 years since Robert Fulton invented the commercial paddle steamer; Bridie’s school is decorating a float in one of the parades that have all New York and many foreign guests involved. Molly’s friends are working on another float sponsored by wealthy suffragist Alva Belmont, and Molly suspects they’re planning a protest. The case will lead to Willa’s shooting on the float and her friends’ arrest for their protest. As Daniel labors to provide security for the foreign dignitaries involved, Molly follows up on a tangled mess of clues to find the truth.
A colorful mystery based on historical events that focuses on the status of women.Pub Date: March 10, 2026
ISBN: 9781250399359
Page Count: 336
Publisher: Minotaur
Review Posted Online: Dec. 25, 2025
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 1, 2026
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
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
More than any of his earlier cases, the comatose hero’s 26th adventure bears the hallmarks of a formal detective story.
Wyoming Game and Fish Warden Joe Pickett has been shot plenty of times before. But this time may be the last.
As Joe hovers between life and death in a Billings hospital, Box indicates that Dorn Peddy and James Dale O’Bryan are the two men who ambushed him, shot him, and left him for dead. But he doesn’t reveal who hired them or why. That’s left up to Joe’s three daughters: bird-abatement firm chief executive Sheridan, Bozeman private eye April, and University of Wyoming undergrad Lucy. Since the man who reported the incident to the Twelve Sleep County Sheriff’s Department has disappeared, the most that newly appointed Sheriff Steve Sondergard can do is to warn Sheridan and her sisters away from the case. But the fact that both the shooters and the witness seem to have come from one of exactly three places presents an obvious appeal to the younger Picketts, who plan to each visit one place and question the owners simultaneously before they can warn each other that anyone’s coming. The only problem is that all the possible suspects—billionaire Michael Thompson and his wife, Brandy, of the Double Diamond Ranch; ranchers John and Shelby Bucholz, of the Bucholz Cattle Company; and secretive sisters Lisa and Lainie McElwee, of McElwee Land and Cattle Ranch—act equally guilty. As Box unspools a series of flashbacks showing what Joe was up to in the weeks before the ambush, one question assumes paramount importance: Can Joe’s daughters identify which of them is behind the plot to murder their father before the hired gunmen visit the hospital and try again?
More than any of his earlier cases, the comatose hero’s 26th adventure bears the hallmarks of a formal detective story.Pub Date: Feb. 24, 2026
ISBN: 9780593851098
Page Count: 352
Publisher: Putnam
Review Posted Online: Nov. 22, 2025
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 1, 2026
© Copyright 2026 Kirkus Media LLC. All Rights Reserved.
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