Strong female characters and engaging historical nuggets result in a satisfying read.
A young widow fights her late husband’s family and social convention to retain control of his struggling San Francisco newspaper in Blanton-Stroud’s historical novel.
When Edward Zimmer died suddenly of a heart attack, he left his 29-year-old wife Sandy his 35% share of the San Francisco Prospect, as well as his position as the twice-daily newspaper’s publisher. But in the three years since, it is her father-in-law Wyatt Zimmer and the board of directors who have assumed the roles of decision-makers. Now, Wyatt wants to sell the paper, a business venture he had always opposed. However, today, VJ day, is a time to celebrate: The Second World War has finally ended with the unconditional surrender of Japan. The streets of San Francisco are filled with revelry, but the abundance of alcohol is resulting in dangerously drunken crowds that are causing mayhem. When Wyatt denigrates her ability to run the paper in front of the board, she decides to investigate for herself what is happening on the streets. Sandy observes that the police are outnumbered and the hospitals are overrun—the city’s powers-that-be have been caught flatfooted. At least six rape victims are treated at the hospital, and there are 13 deaths. What she experiences and learns during this night of violence transforms her. Blanton-Stroud’s engaging narrative is a follow-up to her earlier Jane Benjamin novels about a hard-nosed, intrepid reporter at the Prospect, and Jane returns here to play a pivotal role in Sandy’s development from an insecure people-pleaser into a dynamic force in the male-dominated publishing industry. Determined to get justice for the rape victims and accountability from government officials (“all of them should face consequences for their actions or inactions”), Sandy compellingly finds her voice and her backbone as she battles Wyatt and the board for control of the paper. Inspired by oft-ignored historical details from the 1945 riots, Blanton-Stroud has composed a well-paced, edgy tale that is a salute to solid, honest journalism.
Strong female characters and engaging historical nuggets result in a satisfying read.Pub Date: Aug. 19, 2025
ISBN: 9781647429461
Page Count: 256
Publisher: She Writes Press
Review Posted Online: Feb. 13, 2025
Kirkus Reviews Issue: April 1, 2025
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
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
Don’t feel that your current news feed is disturbing enough? Penny has just what you need.
A sequel to The Grey Wolf (2024) that begins with the earlier novel’s last line: “We have a problem.” And what a problem it is.
Now that Chief Inspector Armand Gamache and his allies in and out of the Sûreté du Québec have saved Canada’s water supply from poisoning on a grand scale, you might think they were entitled to some rest and relaxation in Three Pines. No such luck. Don Joseph Moretti, the Sixth Family head who ordered the hit-and-run on biologist Charles Langlois that nearly killed Gamache as well, is plotting still more criminal enterprises, and Gamache can’t be sure that Chief Inspector Evelyn Tardiff, who’s been cozying up to Moretti in order to get the goods on him, hasn’t gone over to the dark side herself. In fact, Gamache’s uncertainty about Evelyn sets the pattern for much of what follows, for another review of one of Langlois’ notebooks reveals a plot so monstrous that it’s impossible to be sure who’s not in on it. Is it really true, as paranoid online rumors have it, that “Canada is about to attack the U.S.”? Or is it really the other way around, as the discovery of War Plan Red would have it? As the threats loom larger and larger, they raise questions as to whether the Black Wolf, the evil power behind them, is Moretti, disgraced former Deputy Prime Minister Marcus Lauzon, whom Gamache has arranged to have released from prison, or someone even more highly placed. A brief introductory note dating Penny’s delivery of the uncannily prophetic manuscript to September 2024 will do little to assuage the anxieties of concerned readers.
Don’t feel that your current news feed is disturbing enough? Penny has just what you need.Pub Date: Oct. 28, 2025
ISBN: 9781250328175
Page Count: 384
Publisher: Minotaur
Review Posted Online: July 17, 2025
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 15, 2025
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