Krich shifts suspicion expertly from corner to corner of her broad canvas. Whatever you think of arson and murder, you’ll be...
Rehabbers and preservationists fiddle while LA burns.
Someone’s been defacing properties owned by the movers and shakers of the Historic Architectural Restoration and Preservation Board, and tabloid crime columnist Molly Blume (Blues in the Night, 2002), provoked by an assault on fierce old HARP activist Walter Fennel’s home in Hancock Park, thinks there might be a story there. Rescuing fuddled architecture professor Oscar Linney from wandering the streets and sitting through a typically rancorous HARP hearing persuades Molly that there is indeed a story—somebody’s clearly targeting the HARP brass—but it darkens unimaginably when the house Linney bought for his daughter Maggie, who vanished five months ago, burns down with him inside. Was Linney caught in the neighborhood crossfire? Had he found out too much about Maggie’s disappearance? Or was he killed by the same person who got rid of her? Taking time out from the Orthodox observances to which she’s returned, her chaste romance with a rabbi who’s not allowed to touch her, and an exhaustive listing of her opinions on everything from ABBA to Yiddish (a glossary translates her relatives’ idioms for readers who haven’t been paying attention), Molly tiptoes through a minefield of greedy developers, exasperated homeowners, disappointed suitors, and agoraphobic neighbors.
Krich shifts suspicion expertly from corner to corner of her broad canvas. Whatever you think of arson and murder, you’ll be glad you don’t live in Hancock Park.Pub Date: Oct. 1, 2003
ISBN: 0-345-44972-X
Page Count: 400
Publisher: Ballantine
Review Posted Online: June 24, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 15, 2003
This ran in the S.E.P. and resulted in more demands for the story in book form than ever recorded. Well, here it is and it is a honey. Imagine ten people, not knowing each other, not knowing why they were invited on a certain island house-party, not knowing their hosts. Then imagine them dead, one by one, until none remained alive, nor any clue to the murderer. Grand suspense, a unique trick, expertly handled.
Pub Date: Feb. 21, 1939
ISBN: 0062073478
Page Count: 272
Publisher: Dodd, Mead
Review Posted Online: Sept. 20, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 1, 1939
SEEN & HEARD
One protest from an outraged innocent says it all: “This is America. This is Wyoming.”
Once again, Wyoming game warden Joe Pickett gets mixed up in a killing whose principal suspect is his old friend Nate Romanowski, whose attempts to live off the grid keep breaking down in a series of felony charges.
If Judge Hewitt hadn’t bent over to pick up a spoon that had fallen from his dinner table, the sniper set up nearly a mile from his house in the gated community of the Eagle Mountain Club would have ended his life. As it was, the victim was Sue Hewitt, leaving the judge alive and free to rail and threaten anyone he suspected of the shooting. Incoming Twelve Sleep County Sheriff Brendan Kapelow’s interest in using the case to promote his political ambitions and the judge’s inability to see further than his nose make them the perfect targets for a frame-up of Nate, who just wants to be left alone in the middle of nowhere to train his falcons and help his bride, Liv Brannon, raise their baby, Kestrel. Nor are the sniper, the sheriff, and the judge Nate’s only enemies. Orlando Panfile has been sent to Wyoming by the Sinaloan drug cartel to avenge the deaths of the four assassins whose careers Nate and Joe ended last time out (Wolf Pack, 2019). So it’s up to Joe, with some timely data from his librarian wife, Marybeth, to hire a lawyer for Nate, make sure he doesn’t bust out of jail before his trial, identify the real sniper, who continues to take an active role in the proceedings, and somehow protect him from a killer who regards Nate’s arrest as an unwelcome complication. That’s quite a tall order for someone who can’t shoot straight, who keeps wrecking his state-issued vehicles, and whose appalling mother-in-law, Missy Vankeuren Hand, has returned from her latest European jaunt to suck up all the oxygen in Twelve Sleep County to hustle some illegal drugs for her cancer-stricken sixth husband. But fans of this outstanding series will know better than to place their money against Joe.
One protest from an outraged innocent says it all: “This is America. This is Wyoming.”Pub Date: March 3, 2020
ISBN: 978-0-525-53823-3
Page Count: 368
Publisher: Putnam
Review Posted Online: Jan. 12, 2020
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 1, 2020
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