An intriguing, tense, and entertaining read, with a sturdy female protagonist.
When a young female welder dies in a shipyard accident, a reporter suspects foul play in Blanton-Stroud’s mystery novel.
On Saturday, November 7, 1942, the Lowe Shipyard in Richmond, California is buzzing with excitement. Owner Adam Lowe is about to announce a contest, a challenge for his workers to build the next Liberty Ship in less than one week, beating the 10-day record recently set by the Lowe Portland shipyard up north. Plus, Adam has just hired, for the first time, women welders for the Richmond yard. This second part of the announcement is met with decidedly less enthusiasm. Jane Benjamin, gossip columnist for the local San Francisco Prospect, is there to cover the event. As the ceremony draws to a close, whistles and a horn sound from Yard Two of the complex. Jane follows her instincts and runs toward the whistle. There she sees the lifeless body of a young woman, Jeannie Lyons, her hand curled around a welding wand (“She lay at the base of a U-shaped concrete deck, facing the watery bays where five partly built ships lined up, the middle bay empty, like a missing tooth”). The death is declared to be work-related, resulting from carelessness and inexperience. Ambitious and intrepid, Jane has an idea to patriotically promote the replacement of soon-to-be-drafted male workers with women who can contribute to the war effort. The shipyard will run a contest to select a poster girl—Wendy the Welder—and Jane will have a career-boosting story. This third volume in the Jane Benjamin series gradually builds its way into an action-packed thriller as Jane races to uncover the nefarious doings at the shipyard before she becomes one of the victims. Intermingled with the sinister plotline are the politics, prejudices, and societal restrictions of the period, issues that lamentably still have currency. Appearances by notorious columnist Hedda Hopper add a realistic touch to the media frenzy, as well as some satisfying levity. Lively prose, enjoyably edgy dialogue, and a delightful, unconventional, feminist heroine add up to a captivating page-turner.
An intriguing, tense, and entertaining read, with a sturdy female protagonist.Pub Date: Nov. 14, 2023
ISBN: 9781647425937
Page Count: 256
Publisher: She Writes Press
Review Posted Online: July 19, 2023
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 1, 2023
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
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
© Copyright 2026 Kirkus Media LLC. All Rights Reserved.
Follow
Popular in this Genre
We can’t wait for you to join Kirkus!
It’s free and takes less than 10 seconds!
Already have an account? Log in.
OR
Sign in with GoogleTrouble signing in? Retrieve credentials.
Welcome Back!
OR
Sign in with GoogleTrouble signing in? Retrieve credentials.
