Pearson's latest expert take on the Black Sunday formula pits his veteran team, Seattle Sgt. Lou Boldt and police psychologist Daphne Matthews, against a cunning extortionist who's threatening fatal food adulteration on a heroic scale. Like the seasoned pros they are, Boldt and Matthews don't waste any time tracing the motive to somebody who had a personal grudge against Matthews's lover Owen Adler, lord of giant Adler Foods—presumably somebody who was victimized in a five-year-old case, when Adler Foods' culpability in a tainted-chicken scandal was covered up and shifted to innocent supplier Mark Meriweather of Longview Farms. Meriweather went bankrupt and killed himself under the weight of bogus findings of salmonella in his stock. Even as Boldt and Matthews are focusing in on a Longview alumnus who's trying to drive Adler to bankruptcy and suicide, Boldt succeeds in getting surveillance footage of the Tin Man who injected cholera- 395 into five cans of Mom's Chicken Soup—but the Tin Man on camera, whom Boldt is about to identify as one Harry Caulfield, is unmistakably a woman. Can Boldt and Matthews regain their bearings, and identify the turncoat in their own ranks, in time to keep the death toll from rising past one, or past five, or seven, or eleven? When a blackmail demand leads to a wearying duel of wits at ATMs throughout the city, Boldt and Matthews keep getting closer and closer to the accomplice making the withdrawals, then (yes!) pull in the suspect—just as Boldt's brainless captain is goading the extortionist to fury by yanking all of Adler's products from supermarket shelves, setting the stage for a tense climax—and one final twist. Slicker and more two-dimensional than Pearson's organ- harvesting thriller, The Angel Maker (1993), but still a crackerjack procedural, loaded with inside details. Guaranteed to keep you reading till dawn—longer, if you wait for your fingers to unclench. ($150,000 ad/promo; author tour)
Pub Date: Oct. 6, 1994
ISBN: 0-7868-6066-9
Page Count: 384
Publisher: Hyperion
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 1, 1994
An anodyne visit with Tricia and her friends and enemies hung on a thin mystery.
Too much free time leads a New Hampshire bookseller into yet another case of murder.
Now that Tricia Miles has Pixie Poe and Mr. Everett practically running her bookstore, Haven’t Got a Clue, she finds herself at loose ends. Her wealthy sister, Angelica, who in the guise of Nigela Ricita has invested heavily in making Stoneham a bookish tourist attraction, is entering the amateur competition for the Great Booktown Bake-Off. So Tricia, who’s recently taken up baking as a hobby, decides to join her and spends a lot of time looking for the perfect cupcake recipe. A visit to another bookstore leaves Tricia witnessing a nasty argument between owner Joyce Widman and next-door neighbor Vera Olson over the trimming of tree branches that hang over Joyce’s yard—also overheard by new town police officer Cindy Pearson. After Tricia accepts Joyce’s offer of some produce from her garden, they find Vera skewered by a pitchfork, and when Police Chief Grant Baker arrives, Joyce is his obvious suspect. Ever since Tricia moved to Stoneham, the homicide rate has skyrocketed (Poisoned Pages, 2018, etc.), and her history with Baker is fraught. She’s also become suspicious about the activities at Pets-A-Plenty, the animal shelter where Vera was a dedicated volunteer. Tricia’s offered her expertise to the board, but president Toby Kingston has been less than welcoming. With nothing but baking on her calendar, Tricia has plenty of time to investigate both the murder and her vague suspicions about the shelter. Plenty of small-town friendships and rivalries emerge in her quest for the truth.
An anodyne visit with Tricia and her friends and enemies hung on a thin mystery.Pub Date: Aug. 13, 2019
ISBN: 978-1-9848-0272-9
Page Count: 320
Publisher: Berkley
Review Posted Online: May 26, 2019
Kirkus Reviews Issue: June 15, 2019
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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