Lots of diamonds, lots of homicides, not a whole lot of other stuff.
The news that diamonds worth $1.2 million lifted from Canada’s De Kirk Mines in Cape Diamond (2018) are hidden somewhere off Mission Road unleashes “the Great Springfield Diamond Hunt.”
The first apparent casualty is Jason McAllister, an American math student who vanishes shortly after announcing his intention of hiking Mission Road during a frigid February six weeks after the original heist and the kidnapping and return of Grace Dumont—whose late grandfather Gabriel Dumont was head of the Travellers gang—along with a million-dollar gem for her inconvenience. When McAllister’s Facebook account posts a map of the search area 10 days later, Senior Detective Frank Yakabuski, who’s already linked McAllister to main-chance criminal Robert Allen Bangles, aka Bobby Bangs, knows that other fortune hunters will follow. Once Yakabuski succeeds in neutralizing a quartet of mobsters visiting from Buffalo, the treasure hunt settles into a competition among three local gangs: the Shiners, whose chief, Sean Morrissey, the alleged mastermind behind the theft, is eager to “use our enemies against each other”; the Travellers, now under Linus Desjardins; and the Popeyes, whose acting head is Henri Lepine. Mexican assassin Cambino Cortez, Morrissey’s presumed partner, scurries from one rendezvous to the next, winnowing the cast as he closes in on the jewels. Despite the sky-high body count and some powerful individual scenes, this sequel suffers from sequelitis: In the absence of a beginning or an unforeseen ending, it’s all middle.
Lots of diamonds, lots of homicides, not a whole lot of other stuff.Pub Date: June 9, 2020
ISBN: 978-1-77041-396-2
Page Count: 336
Publisher: ECW Press
Review Posted Online: March 28, 2020
Kirkus Reviews Issue: April 15, 2020
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
Feeney improves on her debut with a taut suspense plot, many gleeful twists and turns, and suspects galore.
A news presenter and a police detective are brought together by murders in the British village where they both grew up.
There is precious little that can be revealed about the plot of Feeney’s third novel without spoilers, as the author has woven surprises and plot twists and suspicious linkages into nearly every one of her brief, first-person chapters, written in three alternating narrative voices. “Hers” is Anna Andrews, a wannabe anchor on a BBC news program whose lucky break comes when the body of one of her school friends is found brutally murdered in their hometown, a woodsy little spot called Blackdown. “His” is DCI Jack Harper, head of the Major Crime Team in Blackdown, where major crimes were rather few until now. The third is unnamed but clearly the killer’s. Happily, none of the three is an unreliable narrator—good thing because plenty of people are sick of that—but none is exactly 100% forthcoming either. Which only makes sense, because you can't have reveals without secrets. In a small town like Blackdown, everybody knows everybody, so it’s not too surprising that Anna and Jack have a tragic past or that each has connections to all the victims and suspects while not being totally free from suspicion themselves. Who is that sneaky third narrator? On the way to figuring that out, expect high school mean girls, teen lesbian action, mutilated corpses, nasty things happening to kittens, and—as seems de rigueur in British thrillers—plenty of drinking and wisecracks, sometimes in tandem. “Sadly, my sister has the same taste in wine as she does in men; too cheap, too young, and headache-inducing.”
Feeney improves on her debut with a taut suspense plot, many gleeful twists and turns, and suspects galore.Pub Date: July 28, 2020
ISBN: 978-1-250-26608-8
Page Count: 320
Publisher: Flatiron Books
Review Posted Online: May 3, 2020
Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 15, 2020
BOOK TO SCREEN
Don’t feel that your current news feed is disturbing enough? Penny has just what you need.
A sequel to The Grey Wolf (2024) that begins with the earlier novel’s last line: “We have a problem.” And what a problem it is.
Now that Chief Inspector Armand Gamache and his allies in and out of the Sûreté du Québec have saved Canada’s water supply from poisoning on a grand scale, you might think they were entitled to some rest and relaxation in Three Pines. No such luck. Don Joseph Moretti, the Sixth Family head who ordered the hit-and-run on biologist Charles Langlois that nearly killed Gamache as well, is plotting still more criminal enterprises, and Gamache can’t be sure that Chief Inspector Evelyn Tardiff, who’s been cozying up to Moretti in order to get the goods on him, hasn’t gone over to the dark side herself. In fact, Gamache’s uncertainty about Evelyn sets the pattern for much of what follows, for another review of one of Langlois’ notebooks reveals a plot so monstrous that it’s impossible to be sure who’s not in on it. Is it really true, as paranoid online rumors have it, that “Canada is about to attack the U.S.”? Or is it really the other way around, as the discovery of War Plan Red would have it? As the threats loom larger and larger, they raise questions as to whether the Black Wolf, the evil power behind them, is Moretti, disgraced former Deputy Prime Minister Marcus Lauzon, whom Gamache has arranged to have released from prison, or someone even more highly placed. A brief introductory note dating Penny’s delivery of the uncannily prophetic manuscript to September 2024 will do little to assuage the anxieties of concerned readers.
Don’t feel that your current news feed is disturbing enough? Penny has just what you need.Pub Date: Oct. 28, 2025
ISBN: 9781250328175
Page Count: 384
Publisher: Minotaur
Review Posted Online: July 17, 2025
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 15, 2025
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