The mystery isn’t all that mysterious, but Osman fans will be glad to hop on that private jet and go along for the ride.
The Thursday Murder Club takes a break while British TV personality—and bestselling author—Osman introduces another lovable group of unwitting investigators.
Amy Wheeler and her father-in-law, Steve, have a special relationship. They talk on the phone every day but in a particularly British way, communicating important things while chatting about the weather. Steve is a former London cop who’s retired to the small town of Axley, and since his wife died he’s retreated into a routine of playing with his cat, Trouble, and attending Quiz Night at the local pub. Amy works as a bodyguard for Maximum Impact Solutions, a private security company, traveling the world and having adventures. Her husband, Adam—Steve’s son—works in finance and also spends most of his time traveling; they view their relationship as a long-term bet and don’t mind not seeing much of each other for now. Things begin to go sideways, though, while Amy is on a private island off the coast of South Carolina guarding Rosie D’Antonio, a Jackie Collins–esque novelist who’s being threatened by a Russian oligarch who took offense at one of her books. The problem is that three other clients of Amy’s firm have been killed in three separate incidents, each murder occurring when Amy was nearby. Is someone sending her a message? Then the only other person on Rosie’s island, an ex–Navy SEAL hired by Amy’s boss to back her up, tries to kill Amy, and the race for answers is on. Amy begins by reaching out to the only person she can trust—Steve. Rosie isn’t going to be left out of the excitement, so, aided by her private jet, the three set off on a journey around the globe as they try to figure out what’s going on while keeping Amy (and Rosie) alive. As in Osman’s other series, they cross paths with a variety of people—including drug-dealing politicians, customs agents, and social media influencers—who may or may not be inclined to help them, and watching the unlikely threesome charm each other and (almost) everyone they meet is a delight.
The mystery isn’t all that mysterious, but Osman fans will be glad to hop on that private jet and go along for the ride.Pub Date: Sept. 17, 2024
ISBN: 9780593653227
Page Count: 400
Publisher: Pamela Dorman/Viking
Review Posted Online: July 4, 2024
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 1, 2024
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
PERSPECTIVES
SEEN & HEARD
Enough clues, red herrings, and false endings to make readers feel that the Orient Express has put out to sea.
A luxury liner bound for New York in 1924 becomes the scene of a twisty golden age pastiche.
When an unnamed third-class passenger discovers the body of an elderly man at the bottom of an exterior flight of stairs aboard the Endeavour, Capt. McCrory insists it must be an accident. But James Temple, a Scotland Yard detective who just happens to be aboard, says that no one would have ventured to the outdoor steps in the rain without a coat, so the death should be treated as suspicious. Unable to stop Temple from investigating, McCrory assigns ship’s officer Timothy Birch to accompany him, and Birch promptly becomes the world’s most unwilling Dr. Watson, constantly battling Temple over theories and procedures. Anxious that they have only four days to find a potential killer before the ship docks and lets its 2,000 passengers roam free in New York, he’s especially infuriated at the leisurely pace marked by Temple’s bromide, “Facts before witnesses.” There’s reason to sympathize with Temple, because the suspects in first and second class (the only classes that matter in this ultra-class-conscious world) are cardboard cutouts—the successful banker, his trophy wife, the aspiring artists, the gallery owner—who are much less interesting than the secrets they’re hiding. In his most anachronistic development, author Hindle shows Birch, unlike the imperturbable sidekicks he echoes, sunk in grief over his vanished daughter, Amelia, and his estranged wife, Kate, who left him after Amelia disappeared during one of his ocean voyages. He’d do anything to get his daughter back, he tells Temple, and his determination leads to the biggest surprise of all.
Enough clues, red herrings, and false endings to make readers feel that the Orient Express has put out to sea.Pub Date: Sept. 29, 2026
ISBN: 9798217185740
Page Count: 464
Publisher: Dutton
Review Posted Online: July 20, 2026
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 15, 2026
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
© Copyright 2026 Kirkus Media LLC. All Rights Reserved.
Follow
Popular in this Genre
We can’t wait for you to join Kirkus!
It’s free and takes less than 10 seconds!
Already have an account? Log in.
OR
Sign in with GoogleTrouble signing in? Retrieve credentials.
Welcome Back!
OR
Sign in with GoogleTrouble signing in? Retrieve credentials.
