Connolly’s (A Turn for the Bad, 2016, etc.) heroine clearly has a gift for solving mysteries, and the interesting characters...
Move over, Agatha Christie: a pub owner in County Cork fancies herself a young Miss Marple.
Irish-American Maura Donovan was raised in Boston by her grandmother, whose dying wish was that Maura visit Ireland. It turns out that her grandmother arranged for Maura to inherit a pub in the little West Cork town of Leap. Knowing nothing about pubs, Maura relies on the help of employees Mick, Jimmy, and Rose, who's Jimmy's daughter. When an unusually large snowstorm throws the whole area into emergency mode, Maura’s pub fills with orphans of the storm, including a middle-aged woman with an English accent. Mick is quite sure that she’s Diane Caldwell, who was questioned but never arrested in the murder of her neighbor Sharon Morgan by multiple stab wounds. Both of them lived in England but owned holiday houses in Cork. Lazy Jimmy grumbles, Mick is his usual stalwart self, and Rose does an amazing job whipping the small amount of food they have into a meal, somehow transforming the old, unused pub kitchen into one that works. After 20-plus years, Diane is willing to tell her story to the skeptical folks sheltering in the pub—including Bart Hayes, who was a young garda at the time of the murder—and answer questions from the group, who find themselves acting as an unofficial jury. The affair Diane’s husband was having with Sharon provided her with a motive, but the police never found any forensic evidence linking her to the bloody murder. As the long night goes on, more people are persuaded that she may be innocent. But can rehashing the past clear Diane and find a killer?
Connolly’s (A Turn for the Bad, 2016, etc.) heroine clearly has a gift for solving mysteries, and the interesting characters she presents warts and all make for a fine read in the classic style.Pub Date: March 14, 2017
ISBN: 978-1-68331-100-3
Page Count: 320
Publisher: Crooked Lane
Review Posted Online: Jan. 22, 2017
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 1, 2017
More of a western than a mystery, like most of Joe’s adventures, and all the better for the open physical clashes that...
Wyoming Game and Fish Warden Joe Pickett (Free Fire, 2007, etc.), once again at the governor’s behest, stalks the wraithlike figure who’s targeting elk hunters for death.
Frank Urman was taken down by a single rifle shot, field-dressed, beheaded and hung upside-down to bleed out. (You won’t believe where his head eventually turns up.) The poker chip found near his body confirms that he’s the third victim of the Wolverine, a killer whose animus against hunters is evidently being whipped up by anti-hunting activist Klamath Moore. The potential effects on the state’s hunting revenues are so calamitous that Governor Spencer Rulon pulls out all the stops, and Pickett is forced to work directly with Wyoming Game and Fish Director Randy Pope, the boss who fired him from his regular job in Saddlestring District. Three more victims will die in rapid succession before Joe is given a more congenial colleague: Nate Romanowski, the outlaw falconer who pledged to protect Joe’s family before he was taken into federal custody. As usual in this acclaimed series, the mystery is slight and its solution eminently guessable long before it’s confirmed by testimony from an unlikely source. But the people and scenes and enduring conflicts that lead up to that solution will stick with you for a long time.
More of a western than a mystery, like most of Joe’s adventures, and all the better for the open physical clashes that periodically release the tension between the scheming adversaries.Pub Date: May 20, 2008
ISBN: 978-0-399-15488-1
Page Count: 320
Publisher: Putnam
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 15, 2008
This ran in the S.E.P. and resulted in more demands for the story in book form than ever recorded. Well, here it is and it is a honey. Imagine ten people, not knowing each other, not knowing why they were invited on a certain island house-party, not knowing their hosts. Then imagine them dead, one by one, until none remained alive, nor any clue to the murderer. Grand suspense, a unique trick, expertly handled.
Pub Date: Feb. 21, 1939
ISBN: 0062073478
Page Count: 272
Publisher: Dodd, Mead
Review Posted Online: Sept. 20, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 1, 1939
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