A beautiful island made ugly by class warfare makes a convincing backdrop for Chief Kennis' third case (Nantucket Five-Spot,...
An intricate chain of crimes set off during Nantucket’s avowedly quiet season leaves the shrewd poet/police chief little time for versification.
When Jared Bromley tries to return a biology textbook to the object of his adoration, his classmate Alana Trikilis, he sees her leaving her house with another boy. Worried that she’s being taken by force, he follows the two to a supposedly uninhabited cottage at the east end of Nantucket and ends up rescuing Alana from a dangerous situation. Daisy DeHart, the school psychologist Jared sees inside the cottage, has been recruiting girls for porn movies, and Alana has gone there hoping to help Jill Phelan, another high school girl who's caught up in the ring. The other people inside the cottage are so menacing that Alana and Jared don’t dare tell the police. But the NPD chief, LA transplant Henry Kennis, is pulled in when Jill overdoses on a new kind of drug. Kennis has to leave her bedside, her father, and her friend Oscar Graham to attend a memorial service for an ex-Marine who was shot by a stray bullet during hunting season even though he was wearing an orange vest. His death seems less like an accident when Kennis finds a sniper’s bullet rather than standard hunting buckshot. Before Kennis can follow up, he faces a case of arson and Alana’s nervous account of the movies made in that cottage. A mystery writer Kennis is cautiously courting thinks all the events so far are related, although Kennis remains skeptical of her theories when the months pass with no real answers to the crimes. Then Oscar Graham’s body is found floating in a salt marsh, the one holdout in a family land sale is murdered, and an obsession turned to mania threatens to rend Nantucket.
A beautiful island made ugly by class warfare makes a convincing backdrop for Chief Kennis' third case (Nantucket Five-Spot, 2015, etc.).Pub Date: May 3, 2016
ISBN: 978-1-4642-0553-8
Page Count: 354
Publisher: Poisoned Pen
Review Posted Online: Feb. 14, 2016
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 1, 2016
O'Brien proves to be the Oliver Stone of literature, reiterating the same Vietnam stories endlessly without adding any insight. Politician John Wade has just lost an election, and he and his wife, Kathy, have retired to a lakeside cabin to plan their future when she suddenly disappears. O'Brien manages to stretch out this simple premise by sticking in chapters consisting of quotes from various sources (both actual and fictional) that relate to John and Kathy. An unnamed author — an irritating device that recalls the better-handled but still imperfect "Tim O'Brien" narrator of The Things They Carried (1990) — also includes lengthy footnotes about his own experiences in Vietnam. While the sections covering John in the third person are dry, these first-person footnotes are unbearable. O'Brien uses a coy tone (it's as though he's constantly whispering "Ooooh, spooky!"), but there is no suspense: The reader is acquainted with Kathy for only a few pages before her disappearance, so it's impossible to work up any interest in her fate. The same could be said of John, even though he is the focus of the book. Flashbacks and quotes reveal that John was present at the infamous Thuan Yen massacre (for those too thick-headed to understand the connection to My Lai, O'Brien includes numerous real-life references). The symbolism here is beyond cloying. As a child John liked to perform magic tricks, and he was subsequently nicknamed "Sorcerer" by his fellow soldiers — he could make things disappear, get it? John has been troubled for some time. He used to spy on Kathy when they were in college, and his father's habit of calling the chubby boy "Jiggling John" apparently wounded him. All of this is awkwardly uncovered through a pretentious structure that cannot disguise the fact that there is no story here. Sinks like a stone.
Pub Date: Oct. 1, 1994
ISBN: 061870986X
Page Count: 320
Publisher: N/A
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 15, 1994
Three quick, enjoyable reads to get you in a murderous Christmas spirit.
Three familiar sleuths each get a turn in this trio of cozy Christmas mysteries.
First, O’Connor (Murder in Galway, 2019, etc.) dives into Siobhán O’Sullivan’s past. Just graduated from the Garda College and not due to report for duty until the New Year, she’s busy preparing for Christmas when she sees a sign advertising a missing dog and links the disappearance to that of her own family dog and others around town. When the town Santy, Paddy O’Shea, is discovered floating dead in a dunk tank he’s filled with hot chocolate, all the missing dogs are also found, waiting in vain to be part of his extravagant show. Now Siobhán must help catch Santy's killer. Next up, Day (Strangled Eggs and Ham, 2019, etc.) presents South Lick, Indiana, cafe/country store owner Robbie Jordan, whose boyfriend Abe’s father, Howard O’Neill, has secretly acquired Cocoa, a rescued Lab puppy, as a Christmas gift for Abe’s son, Sean. When Howard’s business associate, Jed Greenberg, is found dead on an icy sidewalk, tangled in Cocoa’s leash, it turns out to be murder. Though Jed had plenty of enemies, Howard is a particularly choice suspect because he’d just learned that Jed had cheated him in a business deal. In the final tale, Erickson (Death by Café Mocha, 2019, etc.) features cafe/bookstore owner Krissy Hancock, a locally renowned sleuth who reluctantly accompanies her friend Rita Jablonski to a remote warehouse, where Lewis Coates, whose attention to detail is obsessive, has installed an escape room. Each member of the small group is given their own room whose door code they must determine from cryptic clues. They all manage to escape to a large locked room where they find the corpse of Coates. A prick Krissy finds on his finger and traces to a trick mug strongly suggests that one of the players is also a killer.
Three quick, enjoyable reads to get you in a murderous Christmas spirit.Pub Date: Sept. 24, 2019
ISBN: 978-1-4967-2360-4
Page Count: 320
Publisher: Kensington
Review Posted Online: July 27, 2019
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 15, 2019
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
© Copyright 2025 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.
