Engaging characters enliven this brisk and entertaining mystery.
In Archer and Wade’s thriller, podcasters scramble to identify which of their upcoming guests is scheming to murder them.
Podcaster Raspy Fuse gets his very first death threat via text. The anonymous message promises that one of three authors appearing together on a future show will kill him and his co-host and best friend, Salty Remarks. This trio of writers is already suspicious after their shared interview with a California podcaster who mysteriously died later that same day. So, Raspy and Salty look closely at their scheduled guests: poet William Z. Wisp, romance author Della Molasses, and thriller scribe Edwin Nocturne (“Raspy liked his chances in a fistfight with any of the three. But the threat was murder, not a boxing match”). Each of them, it turns out, has ties to people who are not exactly on good terms with the podcasting hosts, including an IT guy to whom they owe money. As motives and suspects pile up, Raspy and Salty have very little time to determine which of the three intends to take them out during their podcast’s year-end live production. The co-authors pack a lot into this novella, such as shifting narrative perspectives that plumb the depths of the energetic cast. Raspy and Salty may occasionally clash (Salty doesn’t initially take the death threat seriously), but they clearly care for and respect one another. The potential killers flaunt robust personalities, even if they’re superficially defined by their respective genres’ associated stereotypes (William is pretentious, Della is sex-positive, and Edwin broods). The story’s predominant focus is the whodunit (or “whomightdoit”); there’s not much room for humor, aside from delightfully goofy names (including one that hilariously makes other characters cringe). A frenzied final act wraps up things in style. The ending, though gratifying, is one many readers will likely foresee.
Engaging characters enliven this brisk and entertaining mystery.Pub Date: Nov. 14, 2023
ISBN: 9798987757079
Page Count: 162
Publisher: Charlotte Readers Podcast, LLC
Review Posted Online: Jan. 9, 2024
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
BOOK REVIEW
Gloriously artificial, improbable, and ingenious. Fans of both versions of Horowitz will rejoice.
What begins as a decorous whodunit set in a gated community on the River Thames turns out to be another metafictional romp for mystery writer Anthony Horowitz and his frequent collaborator, ex-DI Daniel Hawthorne.
Everyone in Riverview Close hates Giles Kenworthy, an entitled hedge fund manager who bought Riverview Lodge from chess grandmaster Adam Strauss when the failure of Adam’s chess-themed TV show forced him and his wife, Teri, to downsize to The Stables at the opposite end of the development. So the surprise when Kenworthy’s wife, retired air hostess Lynda, returns home from an evening out with her French teacher, Jean-François, to find her husband’s dead body is mainly restricted to the manner of his death: He’s been shot through the throat with an arrow. Suspects include—and seem to be limited to—Richmond GP Dr. Tom Beresford and his wife, jewelry designer Gemma; widowed ex-nuns May Winslow and Phyllis Moore; and retired barrister Andrew Pennington, whose name is one of many nods to Agatha Christie. Detective Superintendent Tariq Khan, feeling outside his element, calls in Hawthorne and his old friend John Dudley as consultants, and eventually the case is marked as solved. Five years later, Horowitz, needing to plot and write a new novel on short notice, asks Hawthorne if he can supply enough information about the case to serve as its basis, launching another prickly collaboration in which Hawthorne conceals as much as he reveals. To say more, as usual with this ultrabrainy series, would spoil the string of surprises the real-life author has planted like so many explosive devices.
Gloriously artificial, improbable, and ingenious. Fans of both versions of Horowitz will rejoice.Pub Date: April 16, 2024
ISBN: 9780063305649
Page Count: 384
Publisher: Harper/HarperCollins
Review Posted Online: Jan. 20, 2024
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 15, 2024
Squeamish readers will find this isn’t their cup of tea.
Dexter meets Killing Eve in Wallace’s dark comic thriller debut.
While accepting condolences following her father’s funeral, 30-something narrator Claire receives an email saying that one of her paintings is a finalist for a prize. But her joy is short-circuited the next morning when she learns in a second apologetic note that the initial email had been sent to the wrong Claire. The sender, Lucas Kane, is “terribly, terribly sorry” for his mistake. Claire, torn between her anger and suicidal thoughts, has doubts about his sincerity and stalks him to a London pub, where his fate is sealed: “I stare at Lucas Kane in real life, and within moments I know. He doesn’t look sorry.” She dispatches and buries Lucas in her back garden, but this crime does not go unnoticed. Proud of her meticulous standards as a serial killer, Claire wonders if her grief for her father is making her reckless as she seeks to identify the blackmailer among the members of her weekly bereavement support group. The female serial killer as antihero is a growing subgenre (see Oyinkan Braithwaite’s My Sister, the Serial Killer, 2018), and Wallace’s sociopathic protagonist is a mordantly amusing addition; the tool she uses to interact with ordinary people while hiding her homicidal nature is especially sardonic: “Whenever I’m unsure of how I’m expected to respond, I use a cliché. Even if I’m not sure what it means, even if I use it incorrectly, no one ever seems to mind.” The well-written storyline tackles some tough subjects—dementia, elder abuse, and parental cruelty—but the convoluted plot starts to drag at the halfway point. Given the lack of empathy in Claire’s narration, most of the characters come across as not very likable, and the reader tires of her sneering contempt.
Squeamish readers will find this isn’t their cup of tea.Pub Date: April 16, 2024
ISBN: 9780143136170
Page Count: 336
Publisher: Penguin
Review Posted Online: Feb. 3, 2024
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 1, 2024
© Copyright 2024 Kirkus Media LLC. All Rights Reserved.
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