Grade A for franchise allusions, B-minus for dialogue, C for backstage atmosphere, and F for plotting, since Goldsborough...
Archie Goodwin goes undercover, unconvincingly and unsuccessfully, in Goldsborough’s 12th Nero Wolfe pastiche (Stop the Presses!, 2015, etc.).
Having just closed a case that brought him a big retainer, Wolfe, currently immersed in reading The Hidden Persuaders and Silent Spring, isn’t eager to listen to rival orchid grower Lewis Hewitt’s friend Broadway producer Roy Breckenridge. Even after he responds to the irresistible bait Hewitt dangles before him, Wolfe learns little from Breckenridge’s account of vague misgivings about his production of Death at Cresthaven despite its laudatory reviews and respectable box office earnings. Since Wolfe leaves home only to visit his barber, he sends Archie to poke around in the guise of one Alan MacGregor, a writer for the fictitious StageArts Canada, recalling Archie's similar role in Rex Stout's If Death Ever Slept (1957). Archie’s cover keeps his interviews with Tony-hungry leading lady Ashley Williston, Hollywood action star Brad Lester, juvenile Steve Peters, ingénue Melissa Cartwright, character actors Max Ennis and Teresa Reed, and stage manager Hollis Sperry anodyne, and he’s looking elsewhere when somebody spikes Breckenridge’s Coca-Cola with arsenic. Wolfe, predictably miffed—though no more miffed than Inspector Cramer or Lon Cohen, Archie’s pal at the New York Gazette—summons the suspects seriatim to his brownstone, spots a telltale omission few readers will notice, and announces the culprit at a ritual gathering of them all at the same venerable location.
Grade A for franchise allusions, B-minus for dialogue, C for backstage atmosphere, and F for plotting, since Goldsborough relies on the same relentlessly unvaried Q-and-A that gave golden-age mysteries such a bad name. As the new homicide cop says: “This has been one colossal waste of time.”Pub Date: March 7, 2017
ISBN: 978-1-5040-4111-9
Page Count: 250
Publisher: Open Road Integrated Media
Review Posted Online: Jan. 31, 2017
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 1, 2017
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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