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
A terrifying page-turner with the complexities of fatherhood at its core.
The serial killer who terrorized a small British town by kidnapping and murdering five little boys has been locked up for over a decade. So who could have taken 6-year-old Neil Spencer?
"The first forty-eight hours following a disappearance are the most crucial." And yet one of those hours has gone by the time Neil's separated parents realize he never made it from his father's house to his mother's, a short walk he took alone. One of the main investigators of the crime is DI Pete Willis, who cracked a similar case years back and has never quite recovered from it, especially since one of the missing boys was never found. Is there an accomplice still on the loose? As Willis and his colleagues comb the town for clues about the disappearance, a recently widowed novelist and his young son move into what they don't yet know is called "the scary house." Jake is a bright but isolated child who has relied heavily on an imaginary friend and a Packet of Special Things for comfort since he came home from school one day to find his mother's lifeless body at the foot of the stairs. This move is meant to be a much-needed fresh start for the grieving and bewildered father and son, but from the start nothing goes right. On Jake's first day at his new school, the other children draw him into discussion about the missing boy and the Whisper Man who took him. Soon enough, Jake hears whispering too. North's novel pits nasty men submerged in evil against decent men struggling to do good; several father-son pairs reflect the challenges and darker possibilities of this relationship, though plotlines involving female characters are a bit undeveloped.
A terrifying page-turner with the complexities of fatherhood at its core.Pub Date: Aug. 20, 2019
ISBN: 978-1-250-31799-5
Page Count: 368
Publisher: Celadon Books
Review Posted Online: May 26, 2019
Kirkus Reviews Issue: June 15, 2019
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK TO SCREEN
Short chapters, paragraphs, and sentences; stilted dialogue; facile plotting; a few feeble passes at description: a...
Schematic and pedestrian, Patterson’s latest (after The Beach House, p. 519) pits Alex Cross against a trio of serial killers.
If only Alex Cross (last seen in Violets Are Blue, 200l) could retire from the Washington Police Force, as he wants to when he first appears here, having breakfast with his family. Alas, Cross’s friend John Sampson entreats the detective to take one more case, and a desultory pursuit ensues. Sampson believes the conviction of his friend, ’Nam vet Ellis Cooper, for the brutal murder of three women resulted from a frame-up. Patterson’s quick (what else?) crosscut to the killers bears Sampson out. Calling themselves “the three blind mice,” the men are hired killers unaware of the identity and motives of their employer, who, presumably, is the fourth mouse of the title. With “the clock for Ellis Cooper . . . ticking so loud,” Cross and Sampson search in vain for evidence to clear him before he is executed. The Army’s indifference to evidence that clears Cooper and points to other suspects bluntly suggests a cover-up. Then, crimes similar to the ones Copper allegedly committed follow: the three killers slaughter their victims, paint them red, and leave a straw doll at the scene of the carnage. E-mails from someone called “Foot Soldier” lead Cross to the solution, which, as Patterson makes obvious, stems from atrocities the military committed in Vietnam. Some feel-good domestic scenes (Cross’s grandma survives heart surgery) and a few hackneyed romantic interludes for Cross and Sampson break up the chase. At the closeout, the killers dispatched, Cross is planning to go to work for the FBI, suggesting a new tack for the series.
Short chapters, paragraphs, and sentences; stilted dialogue; facile plotting; a few feeble passes at description: a Patterson blue-plate special.Pub Date: Nov. 18, 2002
ISBN: 0-316-69300-6
Page Count: 28
Publisher: Little, Brown
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 1, 2002
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