by San Cassimally ‧ RELEASE DATE: April 26, 2014
Arthur Conan Doyle’s world gets progressively twisted in a slightly tangled story.
Edinburgh-based Cassimally (The Case Book of Irene Adler, 2013) brings back the unconventional female who famously impressed Sherlock Holmes for the second installment of a series.
Actress Irene Adler has returned to London following her getaway trip to Australia after the showdown between Holmes and his archenemy, Professor Moriarty, at Reichenbach Falls. Sadly, at least from her point of view, while the sleuth joined her for a spell, he never acted on their sexual attraction. Still, now that they’re both back in London, Holmes offers sage advice about her investigation agency: Use her cross-dressing skills and operate it as a man. Adler decides to try to take his advice, and Cassimally launches into a series of separate-chapter stories of cases and capers. She gets involved in the treason trial of a friend of Lord Clarihoe, her marriage-in-name-only gay husband known as Algie. With the help of her crew of justice-seeking friends, dubbed the Club des As, Irene pulls off a Robin Hood move to help a struggling merchant, a drug-addled Holmes concerned that he committed the crime. When a baby is abducted, all fear the worst, leading Irene to engage in harsh interrogation methods. Other incidents involve foiling an attempt to assassinate the future prime minister Lloyd George, conducting a heist on a bank that Holmes deemed “unassailable,” uncovering cannibalism, and aiding a woman even more libertine than the narrator of these tales. Cassimally’s Irene is a coolly sardonic observer of Victorian hypocrisy and corruption, vibrantly depicted in her stories. She also embraces then-emerging Freudian psychology and is open-minded about sexuality, with her bond with Oscar Wilde–like Algie both believable and touching. Irene’s interactions with Holmes, however, get a bit muddled. Having the two survive Reichenbach Falls together was an inspired idea, but these tales tend to jump around and include some rather underdeveloped and digressive check-ins about Holmes, making it challenging for readers to track the chronological trajectory of this intriguing relationship.
Arthur Conan Doyle’s world gets progressively twisted in a slightly tangled story.Pub Date: April 26, 2014
ISBN: 978-1497383401
Page Count: 180
Publisher: CreateSpace
Review Posted Online: July 11, 2014
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
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by J.A. Jance ‧ RELEASE DATE: April 2, 2019
Proficient but eminently predictable. Amid all the time shifts and embedded backstories, the most surprising feature is how...
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A convicted killer’s list of five people he wants dead runs the gamut from the wife he’s already had murdered to franchise heroine Ali Reynolds.
Back in the day, women came from all over to consult Santa Clarita fertility specialist Dr. Edward Gilchrist. Many of them left his care happily pregnant, never dreaming that the father of the babies they carried was none other than the physician himself, who donated his own sperm rather than that of the handsome, athletic, disease-free men pictured in his scrapbook. When Alexandra Munsey’s son, Evan, is laid low by the kidney disease he’s inherited from his biological father and she returns to Gilchrist in search of the donor’s medical records, the roof begins to fall in on him. By the time it’s done falling, he’s serving a life sentence in Folsom Prison for commissioning the death of his wife, Dawn, the former nurse and sometime egg donor who’d turned on him. With nothing left to lose, Gilchrist tattoos himself with the initials of five people he blames for his fall: Dawn; Leo Manuel Aurelio, the hit man he’d hired to dispose of her; Kaitlyn Todd, the nurse/receptionist who took Dawn’s place; Alex Munsey, whose search for records upset his apple cart; and Ali Reynolds, the TV reporter who’d helped put Alex in touch with the dozen other women who formed the Progeny Project because their children looked just like hers. No matter that Ali’s been out of both California and the news business for years; Gilchrist and his enablers know that revenge can’t possibly be served too cold. Wonder how far down that list they’ll get before Ali, aided once more by Frigg, the methodical but loose-cannon AI first introduced in Duel to the Death (2018), turns on them?
Proficient but eminently predictable. Amid all the time shifts and embedded backstories, the most surprising feature is how little the boundary-challenged AI, who gets into the case more or less inadvertently, differs from your standard human sidekick with issues.Pub Date: April 2, 2019
ISBN: 978-1-5011-5101-9
Page Count: 352
Publisher: Gallery Books/Simon & Schuster
Review Posted Online: Feb. 18, 2019
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 1, 2019
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by Lorna Barrett ‧ RELEASE DATE: Aug. 13, 2019
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
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