A dark picture of hardscrabble Texas juiced by the heroine’s angst makes for a great debut. Here’s hoping for a follow-up.
A gritty, down-home exploration of murder and dysfunction in a Texas town.
Upon her college graduation, Annie McIntyre returns home to Garnett, Texas, thinking about law school but with no clear path in sight. She’s living with her cousin Nikki and waitressing at a diner, where she meets young mother Victoria Merritt. Attending Justin Schneider’s bonfire party takes Annie right back to high school, as beer flows and a volatile combination of jocks, mean girls, and out-of-town roughnecks mix. Victoria turns up apparently bombed out of her mind; it’s the last time Annie sees her alive. When Victoria’s disappearance and a fatal hit-and-run roil the town, Annie, whose dysfunctional family has a long history in law enforcement, feels pulled to investigate. Mary-Pat, who runs a private investigation firm with Annie’s grandfather Leroy, hires her to do office work that may lead to an internship. Annie and Nikki’s many visits to bars in search of Victoria end when her body is discovered in a shallow grave on Annie’s family land. The experience brings on a bout of PTSD from a traumatic experience Annie had at a fraternity party during her senior year in high school. When Fernando, a high school friend who works at the diner, is arrested, Annie gets Leroy and Mary-Pat to investigate for his lawyer. A gas company that sought to lease Victoria’s land gives her husband a financial motive for her murder; the environmental problems the company is hiding give it a powerful motive as well.
A dark picture of hardscrabble Texas juiced by the heroine’s angst makes for a great debut. Here’s hoping for a follow-up.Pub Date: April 19, 2022
ISBN: 978-1-2508-0427-3
Page Count: 304
Publisher: Minotaur
Review Posted Online: Jan. 11, 2022
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 1, 2022
BOOK REVIEW
A vivid, exciting page-turner from one of our most interesting authors of historical fiction.
When a man accused of rape turns up dead, an Early American town seeks justice amid rumors and controversy.
Lawhon’s fifth work of historical fiction is inspired by the true story and diaries of midwife Martha Ballard of Hallowell, Maine, a character she brings to life brilliantly here. As Martha tells her patient in an opening chapter set in 1789, “You need not fear….In all my years attending women in childbirth, I have never lost a mother.” This track record grows in numerous compelling scenes of labor and delivery, particularly one in which Martha has to clean up after the mistakes of a pompous doctor educated at Harvard, one of her nemeses in a town that roils with gossip and disrespect for women’s abilities. Supposedly, the only time a midwife can testify in court is regarding paternity when a woman gives birth out of wedlock—but Martha also takes the witness stand in the rape case against a dead man named Joshua Burgess and his living friend Col. Joseph North, whose role as judge in local court proceedings has made the victim, Rebecca Foster, reluctant to make her complaint public. Further complications are numerous: North has control over the Ballard family's lease on their property; Rebecca is carrying the child of one of her rapists; Martha’s son was seen fighting with Joshua Burgess on the day of his death. Lawhon weaves all this into a richly satisfying drama that moves suspensefully between childbed, courtroom, and the banks of the Kennebec River. The undimmed romance between 40-something Martha and her husband, Ephraim, adds a racy flair to the proceedings. Knowing how rare the quality of their relationship is sharpens the intensity of Martha’s gaze as she watches the romantic lives of her grown children unfold. As she did with Nancy Wake in Code Name Hélène (2020), Lawhon creates a stirring portrait of a real-life heroine and, as in all her books, includes an endnote with detailed background.
A vivid, exciting page-turner from one of our most interesting authors of historical fiction.Pub Date: Dec. 5, 2023
ISBN: 9780385546874
Page Count: 448
Publisher: Doubleday
Review Posted Online: Aug. 12, 2023
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 15, 2023
High art meets low life in a tale a lot more sympathetic to the latter.
Someone is stalking the streets of Lt. Eve Dallas’s New York, intent on bringing new life to sex workers by snuffing out their old ones.
In 2061, prostitutes are called licensed companions, and that’s Leesa Culver’s job description when she’s accosted by a plausible-looking artist who wants to hire her as a model for the night. Before the night is over, she’s been drugged, strangled, costumed, and posed as an uncanny replica of Vermeer’s Girl With a Pearl Earring. The shock of the crime is deepened by the murder the following night of licensed companion Bobby Ren, whose body is discovered at an art gallery entrance costumed and posed as Gainsborough’s Blue Boy. The killer clearly has an obsessive agenda, a rapid-fire timetable, and access to unlimited financial resources that have allowed him to commission expensive custom-made outfits for the victims. This last detail both marks his power and points to the way Dallas, her gazillionaire husband, Roarke, and her sidekick, Det. Delia Peabody, will track him down by methodically narrowing the field of consumers who’ve purchased the costly costumes. After identifying the guilty party two-thirds of the way through the story, they’ll still face an uphill battle convicting a killer with no conscience, no respect for the law, and a budget that would easily cover the means to jump bail, remove his ankle tracker, and hire a private jet to escape to a foreign land with no extradition treaty. Robb keeps it all consistently absorbing by sweating every procedural detail along with her heroine. Only Dallas’ climactic interrogation of her prisoner is a letdown, because it’s perfectly obvious how she’s going to wangle a confession out of him.
High art meets low life in a tale a lot more sympathetic to the latter.Pub Date: Sept. 2, 2025
ISBN: 9781250370822
Page Count: 368
Publisher: St. Martin's
Review Posted Online: May 16, 2025
Kirkus Reviews Issue: June 15, 2025
© Copyright 2025 Kirkus Media LLC. All Rights Reserved.
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