An engaging whodunit with a hero with a sharp tongue and a sharper mind.
“Big-time college sports is a cesspool,” according to New York City private investigator Elgin O’Brien—but he still decides to wade into it on behalf of a grieving father in O’Connor and Stout’s mystery novel.
When the homicide of college basketball player Teddy Malone lands on his desk, Elgin—a former professional b-ball player-turned-PI—is keen to prove that there was a motive behind the seemingly random shooting. There are no suspects in the murder, which occurred in midtown Manhattan, and Elgin soon uncovers that Teddy wasn’t the happy-go-lucky rising star that some claimed. His skills had been going downhill, despite what his head coach, Chris Corsito, says; the coach, whom Elgin, knows, considers himself a god at St. Stephen’s University—one too powerful to topple. After Elgin discovers that Teddy had a gambling addiction, it raises concerns about possible debts or game-fixing—which are only compounded when fentanyl is discovered in his bedroom. The case takes another turn when Elgin conducts interviews at a basketball camp and deems someone there to be a suspect—but there’s no obvious evidence, beyond the person’s guilty behavior. However, as Elgin gets closer to the truth, he’s offered a bribe to forget the whole thing, and Elgin’s girlfriend, actress Monique Montgomery, faces danger, as well. Despite all this, the PI continues to gather evidence and uncovers that some other people may have helped to enable terrible crimes. Elgin’s efforts lead to revelations of a very disturbing nature.
Although the book is set in the present day, the style and tropes of the story vividly recall the fast-paced adventures of decades-old detective stories. Elgin is sharp as a tack, although he’s sometimes cagy about it, and he has a dark past of his own that fuels his drive to discover the truth at all costs. Much of the investigation consists of interviews, and the quip-filled dialogue gives life to the story, and to Elgin as a character. Lines such as “I’ll find the shooter…but I’m not an executioner. I don’t deal in revenge” plunge the reader into the sometimes-melodramatic world of a crime-ridden New York City. Large sections of uninterrupted and unattributed dialogue disrupt the pace at times, but for the most part, the Q&A’s remain entertaining, thanks to Elgin’s strong voice. Along the way, the protagonist attempts to grapple with the money-driven world of professional basketball: “It’s really about power protecting power,” he reluctantly concludes. It’s a hard-hitting message, and the vast conspiracy that drives the story is effectively horrific, even if it sometimes pushes the bounds of credulity; it seems unlikely that Elgin would happen upon a suspect and expose a massive secret so easily. He’s also personally threatened with violence before he seems to pose any real threat, and what Monique faces is not difficult to foresee. That said, readers will find it easy to immerse themselves in O’Connor and Stout’s fictional world, and they’ll judge Elgin to be a compelling guide.
An engaging whodunit with a hero with a sharp tongue and a sharper mind.Pub Date: May 13, 2025
ISBN: 9781958861608
Page Count: 460
Publisher: The Sager Group LLC
Review Posted Online: Aug. 8, 2025
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Oct. 1, 2025
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
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
High-concept and highly entertaining.
Fiction writers compete to finish a famous author’s abandoned novel.
Seven writers, all but one published, have received invitations to spend the weekend with crime novelist Arthur Fletch, the world’s most successful author, on his private island off the coast of Scotland. When they arrive at his cliffside castle, they expect to take part in one of the literary salons for which Fletch is famous; instead, they’re greeted by his agent, who informs them that Fletch is dead. Why has there been nothing about this in the press? Because “there are some…loose ends that must be tied up first.” Fletch has left his eagerly anticipated final novel unfinished, so the agent has summoned the writers to the island for a competition: One of them will get to complete Fletch’s book. As premises go, this one’s a humdinger, courtesy of fantasy writer V.E. Schwab and YA author Cat Clarke, here joining forces as Clarke. The story contains an amusing throughline about the indignity of being an uncelebrated novelist; as the agent tells the assembled writers, the contest winner will receive both cash and something equally valuable: “a way out of the midlist.” The novel’s wandering perspective allows each writer to vent their private frustrations, especially with the publishing industry and with the book world’s genre hierarchy (the YA writer among the competitors understands that she and the romance writer are “supposed to support each other against the general snobbishness of the other genres”). Readers who have come for the crimes and the twists, both of which are plentiful, might grow impatient with all the characters’ backstories, but these readers will likely warm to the shop talk, which at its funniest plays like a kvetchy midlist-writers’ support group.
High-concept and highly entertaining.Pub Date: April 7, 2026
ISBN: 9780063444614
Page Count: 352
Publisher: Harper/HarperCollins
Review Posted Online: Jan. 19, 2026
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 15, 2026
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