A very entertaining potboiler, well plotted and workmanlike.
Crack private investigators Abe and Duff are hired to prove that a murder/suicide was no such thing in Little’s mystery novel.
When Art and Michelle Laskey are found dead with a gun in Michelle’s hand, the medical investigator rules it a murder/suicide—case closed. Their old friend Buddy Olson doesn’t believe it; the Laskeys were always passionately in love, like teenagers. Buddy hires friends Abe Allard and Clive Staples “Duff” Duffy to clear the couple’s names and to find the real killer. As the duo snoop around the Laskeys’ crime-taped house, they’re surprised by Deputy Shelby Ree, who also questions the M.I.’s ruling. Questions soon come bubbling up: Were the proper forensic procedures performed on the murder weapon? How did the Laskeys afford some of their very expensive toys? What’s with the skid marks on the floor of their barn? Someone slashes the tires on Abe and Duff’s decrepit minivan; this and other things suggest that “something [is] rotten in the county of Dane.” A chance discovery leads to a meth ring, and the plot shifts into overdrive, with shootouts and hairy chases and revelations upon revelations. Little’s mystery is pretty much a formula whodunnit, and he is adept in the form. Abe and Duff trade the requisite smart-aleck banter (a running joke is Duff trying out nicknames for his buddy, Abe). They are an odd couple: Abe is an uptight worrywart, while Duff is a real slob with impressive powers of observation and deduction (who else would think to check the dishwasher and find crucial clues therein?). The compelling Shelby Ree is an Indigenous woman, and we learn in a preview of Little’s next book that she’s being groomed for a starring role, an obvious good choice. Southern Wisconsin is Little’s stomping ground, and he clearly knows the lay of the land (his really bad guys, it should be noted, are from out of state).
A very entertaining potboiler, well plotted and workmanlike.Pub Date: July 30, 2023
ISBN: 978-1312275492
Page Count: 206
Publisher: Lulu.com
Review Posted Online: Feb. 8, 2024
Kirkus Reviews Issue: April 1, 2024
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
BOOK REVIEW
Forget about solving all these crimes; the signal triumph here is (spoiler) the heroine’s survival.
Another sweltering month in Charlotte, another boatload of mysteries past and present for overworked, overstressed forensic anthropologist Temperance Brennan.
A week after the night she chases but fails to catch a mysterious trespasser outside her town house, some unknown party texts Tempe four images of a corpse that looks as if it’s been chewed by wild hogs, because it has been. Showboat Medical Examiner Margot Heavner makes it clear that, breaking with her department’s earlier practice (The Bone Collection, 2016, etc.), she has no intention of calling in Tempe as a consultant and promptly identifies the faceless body herself as that of a young Asian man. Nettled by several errors in Heavner’s analysis, and even more by her willingness to share the gory details at a press conference, Tempe launches her own investigation, which is not so much off the books as against the books. Heavner isn’t exactly mollified when Tempe, aided by retired police detective Skinny Slidell and a host of experts, puts a name to the dead man. But the hints of other crimes Tempe’s identification uncovers, particularly crimes against children, spur her on to redouble her efforts despite the new M.E.’s splenetic outbursts. Before he died, it seems, Felix Vodyanov was linked to a passenger ferry that sank in 1994, an even earlier U.S. government project to research biological agents that could control human behavior, the hinky spiritual retreat Sparkling Waters, the dark web site DeepUnder, and the disappearances of at least four schoolchildren, two of whom have also turned up dead. And why on earth was Vodyanov carrying Tempe’s own contact information? The mounting evidence of ever more and ever worse skulduggery will pull Tempe deeper and deeper down what even she sees as a rabbit hole before she confronts a ringleader implicated in “Drugs. Fraud. Breaking and entering. Arson. Kidnapping. How does attempted murder sound?”
Forget about solving all these crimes; the signal triumph here is (spoiler) the heroine’s survival.Pub Date: March 17, 2020
ISBN: 978-1-9821-3888-2
Page Count: 352
Publisher: Scribner
Review Posted Online: Dec. 22, 2019
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 15, 2020
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
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