by Stephanie Barron ‧ RELEASE DATE: Feb. 8, 2022
Full marks for background, plotting, and voice—though fans should know that this 13th case is darker than Jane’s first 12.
Troubled by ill health, Jane Austen repairs with her sister, Cassandra, to Cheltenham Spa for the waters and finds the place anything but restorative.
The volcanic ash from an Indonesian volcano is blanketing Europe, making 1816 the year without a summer. Things are equally bleak for the Austen family, still recovering from recent financial losses. Having lost his ship, the Phoenix, which his navigators ran aground, Jane’s brother Charles faces a ruling from the Admiralty Board about his personal responsibility. When Jane complains of weakness, her apothecary sends her to Cheltenham with orders to take the waters, which she finds vile—but no more disagreeable than her fellow lodger Miss Garthwaite; Miss Garthwaite’s ailing brother, Richard, a clergyman who’s quick to condemn everyone around him; or Viscount Granville Portreath, who descends on their rooming house in search of his wife, invalid poet Rose Williams. Thucydides, the Garthwaite pug, is poisoned. So are several rats who turn up in inconvenient places. But the worst arrives at a costume ball celebrating mad King George III’s Natal Day, when rescuers searching the Cheltenham Assembly after a fire breaks out find one of the guests stabbed to death. It’s not clear whether the victim was indeed the murderer’s target, but it’s clear that Jane will have to extricate herself from the attentions of Raphael West, a painter’s son who’d like to be more than her friend, long enough to follow the clues to the killer.
Full marks for background, plotting, and voice—though fans should know that this 13th case is darker than Jane’s first 12.Pub Date: Feb. 8, 2022
ISBN: 978-1-641-29247-4
Page Count: 336
Publisher: Soho Crime
Review Posted Online: Nov. 9, 2021
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Dec. 1, 2021
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New York Times Bestseller
by Tana French ‧ RELEASE DATE: March 5, 2024
An absorbing crime yarn.
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Our Verdict
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New York Times Bestseller
A divorced American detective tries to blend into rural Ireland in this sequel to The Searcher (2020).
In fictional Ardnakelty, on Ireland’s west coast, lives retired American cop Cal Hooper, who busies himself repairing furniture with 15-year-old Theresa “Trey” Reddy and fervently wishes to be boring. Then into town pops Trey’s long-gone, good-for-nothing dad, Johnny, all smiles and charm. Much to her distaste, he says he wants to reclaim his fatherly role. In fact, he’s on the run from a criminal for a debt he can’t repay, and he has a cockamamie scheme to persuade local townsfolk that there might be gold in the nearby mountain with a vein that might run through some of their properties. (What, no leprechauns?) “It’s not sheep shite you’ll be smelling in a few months’ time, man,” he tells a farmer. “It’s champagne and caviar.” Some people have fun fantasizing about sudden riches, but they know better. Johnny’s pursuer, Cillian Rushborough, comes to town, and Johnny tries to convince him he could get rich by purchasing people’s land. Alas, someone bashes Rushborough’s brains in, and now there’s a murder mystery. The plot is a bit of a stretch, but the characters and their relationships work well. Trey detests Johnny for not being in her life, and now that he’s back, she neither wants nor needs him. She gets on much better with Cal. Still, she’s a testy teenager when she thinks someone is not treating her like an adult. Cal is aware of this, and he’s careful how he talks to her. Johnny, not so much: “I swear to fuck, women are only put on this earth to wreck our fuckin’ heads,” he whines about Trey’s mother, briefly forgetting he’s talking to Trey. The book abounds in local color and lively dialogue.
An absorbing crime yarn.Pub Date: March 5, 2024
ISBN: 9780593493434
Page Count: 480
Publisher: Viking
Review Posted Online: Dec. 6, 2023
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 1, 2024
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SEEN & HEARD
by C.J. Box ‧ RELEASE DATE: Feb. 27, 2024
A tale that’s hard to believe but easy to swallow in a single gulp.
A bear is hunting prey in Wyoming’s Bighorns. And not just any bear.
It’s bad enough that Clay Hutmacher, who manages the Double Diamond Ranch, has lost his son, Clay Jr., to a vicious attack by a grizzly bear. What’s much worse is that Clay Jr.—who’d been about to pop the question to game warden Joe Pickett’s daughter, Sheridan—is only the first of the victims over an exceptionally broad geographical area. Marshal Marvin Bertignolli is clawed and bitten to death over in Hanna. Sgt. Ryan Winner is found bleeding out north of Rawlins. Former Twelve Sleep County prosecutor Dulcie Schalk, one of two survivors of an ambush, doesn’t survive her final encounter. The four experts chosen to kill the grizzly rope Joe into their expedition, but since their quarry keeps turning up far from the last sighting, the most meaningful confrontation the Predator Attack Team has is with a pair of Mama Bears, animal rights activists who demand due process for Tisiphone, as they’ve dubbed the presumed killer. Box, who’s far too canny to leave Tisiphone alone on center stage, follows Joe’s old antagonist Dallas Cates as the ex–rodeo star is released from prison and embarks on his revenge tour, which takes him to Lee Ogburn-Russell, an inventor whose life Dallas saved, and Axel Soledad, a correspondent who shares so many enemies with Dallas that he suggests they go after them together. Franchise fans will appreciate new details about Joe’s complicated family, the obligatory high-country landscapes, and yet another corrupt law enforcer.
A tale that’s hard to believe but easy to swallow in a single gulp.Pub Date: Feb. 27, 2024
ISBN: 9780593331347
Page Count: 384
Publisher: Putnam
Review Posted Online: Jan. 5, 2024
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 1, 2024
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