Synthetic but highly effective thrills for fans who wish Jeffery Deaver, whose strengths and weaknesses Daniels follows as...
Another serial killer, this time a professional assassin ready to murder anyone standing between him and his target, calls Atlanta profiler Jack Kale back to the FBI.
Jack, last seen teaching forensic psychology at Georgia Tech, is initially standoffish about joining the investigation into the death of Dr. George Lawrence, who was killed by a bomb together with the six other people in his cable car four weeks after he, his wife, Rachel, and their partner, Dr. Wilson Landry,happened to see unsavory Sergei Borov pass a briefcase to a bank official tied to a money-laundering case. He doesn’t care that Borov probably hired a killer dubbed the Sandman to eliminate all three witnesses to the transaction before they can testify—until his all-but-fiancee, Detective Beth Sturgis of the Atlanta PD, adds her personal plea to the FBI’s full-court press. And it’s a good thing Jack (Once Shadows Fall, 2015) is willing to go back on the job, because the Sandman isn’t letting any grass grow under his feet. A dedicated professional, he methodically scopes out Rachel’s house and the hospital where she works, arranges two separate killing scenarios that Jack foils, enlists an addled drug addict to help with a third, and leaves a mounting pile of bodies in his wake. True to convention though not to reality, he even meets Beth twice face to face, taunts her, then lets her off with a warning that he doesn’t give many second chances. As if. Jack, fighting not only the Sandman, but his own panic attacks and his addiction to the prescription medication that controls them, still finds the time to pop the question to Beth. It looks as if they’ll face their next monstrous opponent as a married couple, assuming that they survive their encounter with this one.
Synthetic but highly effective thrills for fans who wish Jeffery Deaver, whose strengths and weaknesses Daniels follows as faithfully as the footprints in a dance lesson, would turn them out faster.Pub Date: Sept. 13, 2016
ISBN: 978-1-629-53771-9
Page Count: 352
Publisher: Crooked Lane
Review Posted Online: June 21, 2016
Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 1, 2016
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
The parts with Nero Wolfe, the only character Goldsborough brings to life, are almost worth waiting for.
In Archie Goodwin's 15th adventure since the death of his creator, Rex Stout, his gossipy Aunt Edna Wainwright lures him from 34th Street to his carefully unnamed hometown in Ohio to investigate the death of a well-hated bank president.
Tom Blankenship, the local police chief, thinks there’s no case since Logan Mulgrew shot himself. But Archie’s mother, Marjorie Goodwin, and Aunt Edna know lots of people with reason to have killed him. Mulgrew drove rival banker Charles Purcell out of business, forcing Purcell to get work as an auto mechanic, and foreclosed on dairy farmer Harold Mapes’ spread. Lester Newman is convinced that Mulgrew murdered his ailing wife, Lester’s sister, so that he could romance her nurse, Carrie Yeager. And Donna Newman, Lester’s granddaughter, might have had an eye on her great-uncle’s substantial estate. Nor is Archie limited to mulling over his relatives’ gossip, for Trumpet reporter Verna Kay Padgett, whose apartment window was shot out the night her column raised questions about the alleged suicide, is perfectly willing to publish a floridly actionable summary of the leading suspects that delights her editor, shocks Archie, and infuriates everyone else. The one person missing is Archie’s boss, Nero Wolfe (Death of an Art Collector, 2019, etc.), and fans will breathe a sigh of relief when he appears at Marjorie’s door, debriefs Archie, notices a telltale clue, prepares dinner for everyone, sleeps on his discovery, and arranges a meeting of all parties in Marjorie’s living room in which he names the killer.
The parts with Nero Wolfe, the only character Goldsborough brings to life, are almost worth waiting for.Pub Date: May 19, 2020
ISBN: 978-1-5040-5988-6
Page Count: 248
Publisher: Mysterious Press
Review Posted Online: March 1, 2020
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 15, 2020
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