A quirky murder mystery with a wonderful sense of place.
In Lane’s debut, an unlikely criminal pursues a murderer in his court-appointed small town.
Giles Anthony Maurice Gibson, president of ABC Toys, is held liable when a child chokes to death on one of the loosely attached eyes of ABC’s Poppy Panda doll. The judge sentences him to a year of community service—not in New York, where he lives, but in the dead child’s hometown of Motte and Bailey, Oregon. He soon finds himself a resident of room 202 in the Sleepy Time Motel, washing dishes at the Sunnyside Up café, and wearing an ankle bracelet that ensures he doesn’t leave town. Luckily, none of the locals know why he’s there; the girl’s family has since moved away, and everyone he meets knows him by his new nickname, Tony. As he waits for someone to give him his community service assignment, Tony passes time among his new coworkers, including the no-nonsense cafe owner, the beleaguered waitress, and the grizzled cook with the unlikely name of Walt Whitman. Soon after Tony’s arrival, Walt discovers a dead body in the dumpster behind the restaurant. Instead of alerting the police, Walt dragoons Tony into burying the body in the woods. Soon the Sunnyside Up is under investigation, and if Tony can’t figure out the identity of the murderer, he’s going to wind up with a much harsher sentence than community service. Lane is a talented stylist, and her prose glistens as she describes the picturesque environs of Motte and Bailey: “The tyrant sun made diamonds on the water. The golden fields around the reservoir gave the impression of plenty…Behind it all, the Blue Mountains made a graceful and glorious backdrop, not judgmental now, just a thing of beauty.” The real pleasures, though, are the deftly rendered characters (all characters in the true sense) and their relationships with one another. This is a comic novel with a big heart.
A quirky murder mystery with a wonderful sense of place.Pub Date: May 1, 2024
ISBN: 9781952232862
Page Count: 286
Publisher: Golden Antelope Press
Review Posted Online: March 21, 2025
Kirkus Reviews Issue: June 1, 2025
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
A satisfying thriller that will warm the hearts of fans who already take comfort in hating the forces of evil.
Lt. Eve Dallas’ 63rd futuristic case is less a whodunit than a manhunt for an unusually sympathetic killer.
Thirteen years ago, way back in 2048, scientific genius Steve Redman—father of the Banner-Wyst corporation’s Rainmaker Project—narrowly escaped death in a gas explosion that killed his pregnant wife and infant son and 200 other residents of their New York City apartment building the night before he planned to report his suspicions about the company to the FBI. Now the bill is coming due for Banner-Wyst. The first death to be discovered is that of Lawrence Chu, Redman’s colleague and trusted friend, whose tenure as director of bioengineering science ends when he’s beaten to death. For quite a while, Dallas and her partner, Det. Delia Peabody, know less about this mystery than their readers do. But when Ezra Dent, a consultant to Banner-Wyst who worked with Redman and Chu back in the day, is murdered in exactly the same ferocious way, Dallas and Peabody, with help from Roarke, Dallas’ tech-billionaire husband, promptly put the pieces together and determine who they’re looking for. The search for Redman, who went AWOL from his hospital bed without a trace six years ago, has its own challenges. So does Dallas’ attempt to get cooperation from partners Calvin Banner and Jacob Wyst, who are clearly in the crosshairs of a killer who seems a lot less monstrous than they are. If the breaks in the case are suspiciously convenient in arriving, readers can pride themselves on taking sides against a mega-corporation whose self-avowed ecological saintliness is undermined by its leaders’ underhanded dealing.
A satisfying thriller that will warm the hearts of fans who already take comfort in hating the forces of evil.Pub Date: Sept. 8, 2026
ISBN: 9781250414564
Page Count: 368
Publisher: St. Martin's
Review Posted Online: May 18, 2026
Kirkus Reviews Issue: June 15, 2026
The delightful debut of a classic, prolific detective.
It takes a quirky sleuth to solve a baffling closed-door murder.
The author himself or, more accurately, some version of him, walks the reader through a “gruesome murder” that occurred in a rural farming village. At the center of the crime is the wealthy Ichiyanagi family, including the widow Itoko and her five children. The “heinous crime” occurs in the evening after the festive wedding of eldest son Kenzo to schoolteacher Katsuko. Yokomizo, part narrator and part raconteur, liberally shares digressions such as the fact that his favorite British author is A.A. Milne, who wrote The Red House Mystery as well as the books about Winnie-the-Pooh. Written in 1946 but set in 1937 before the devastation of World War II, this is the first novel featuring Kosuke Kindaichi, the legendary detective who appeared in more than 70 stories by Yokomizo. If Yokomizo is the Japanese Agatha Christie, Kindaichi may seem the Japanese Hercule Poirot—although actually, given his unkempt hair and apparently distracted manner, he’s more a cross between Poirot and Columbo. Shrewdly, his entrance is delayed until midway through the novel, after the police have stalled and both the family and the reader are anxious for a solution. The narrator’s garrulous charm, in a mystery long on logistics and forensic clues but short on detailed character portraits or extended interactions, is a key to the novel’s success, leavening the more intricate pieces of the puzzle. Armchair detectives will welcome the helpful character list that precedes the story.
The delightful debut of a classic, prolific detective.Pub Date: Sept. 15, 2026
ISBN: 9781805336549
Page Count: 192
Publisher: Pushkin Vertigo
Review Posted Online: July 20, 2026
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 15, 2026
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