by Stuart M. Kaminsky ‧ RELEASE DATE: Dec. 1, 2001
Adele’s less memorable this time around, and the double roundup is both too quick and too slow, but Lew is still a triumph:...
Thousands of fictional detectives have returned for encores, but Kaminsky has had the novel idea of recycling his detective’s quarry as well. Once again, as in his winning debut (Vengeance, 2000), Sarasota process server Lew Fonesca (“I’m not a private investigator. I’m not even an accountant”) is on the trail of abused teenager Adele Hanford, who’s slipped the traces at her wealthy, alcoholic foster mother Flo Zink’s. Has she taken off with long-dormant famous author Conrad Lonsberg, who praised her own writing? No, but she’s taken off with his unpublished manuscripts—thousands of pages worth millions of dollars to his heirs—and, aided by her dim teenaged sidekick Mickey Merryman, she’s bent on avenging Lonsberg’s unspecified betrayal by destroying them all page by page. Mickey’s grandfather soon gets caught in the crossfire (his unlovable father will follow), leaving Lew hardly a minute to focus on another missing-persons case that promises to pay him $20 a day: the search for Vera Lynn Uliaks, whose brother Marvin last heard from her a quarter-century ago. Since Vera Lynn’s past is nearly as scarred as Adele’s—she and her husband were linked to the death of teenager Sarah Taylor just before they disappeared in 1975—Lew realizes he’s hunting two women who have excellent reasons for not being found.
Adele’s less memorable this time around, and the double roundup is both too quick and too slow, but Lew is still a triumph: a Lew Archer type with nerve endings so sensitive that when he’s asked, “Anybody dead?” he replies, “Most of the people who ever lived.”Pub Date: Dec. 1, 2001
ISBN: 0-312-87452-9
Page Count: 352
Publisher: Forge
Review Posted Online: June 24, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Oct. 1, 2001
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by Agatha Christie ‧ RELEASE DATE: Feb. 28, 1934
A murder is committed in a stalled transcontinental train in the Balkans, and every passenger has a watertight alibi. But Hercule Poirot finds a way.
**Note: This classic Agatha Christie mystery was originally published in England as Murder on the Orient Express, but in the United States as Murder in the Calais Coach. Kirkus reviewed the book in 1934 under the original US title, but we changed the title in our database to the now recognizable title Murder on the Orient Express. This is the only name now known for the book. The reason the US publisher, Dodd Mead, did not use the UK title in 1934 was to avoid confusion with the 1932 Graham Greene novel, Orient Express.
Pub Date: Feb. 28, 1934
ISBN: 978-0062073495
Page Count: -
Publisher: Dodd, Mead
Review Posted Online: Sept. 20, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 1, 1934
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by Robert Goldsborough ‧ RELEASE DATE: May 19, 2020
The parts with Nero Wolfe, the only character Goldsborough brings to life, are almost worth waiting for.
In Archie Goodwin's 15th adventure since the death of his creator, Rex Stout, his gossipy Aunt Edna Wainwright lures him from 34th Street to his carefully unnamed hometown in Ohio to investigate the death of a well-hated bank president.
Tom Blankenship, the local police chief, thinks there’s no case since Logan Mulgrew shot himself. But Archie’s mother, Marjorie Goodwin, and Aunt Edna know lots of people with reason to have killed him. Mulgrew drove rival banker Charles Purcell out of business, forcing Purcell to get work as an auto mechanic, and foreclosed on dairy farmer Harold Mapes’ spread. Lester Newman is convinced that Mulgrew murdered his ailing wife, Lester’s sister, so that he could romance her nurse, Carrie Yeager. And Donna Newman, Lester’s granddaughter, might have had an eye on her great-uncle’s substantial estate. Nor is Archie limited to mulling over his relatives’ gossip, for Trumpet reporter Verna Kay Padgett, whose apartment window was shot out the night her column raised questions about the alleged suicide, is perfectly willing to publish a floridly actionable summary of the leading suspects that delights her editor, shocks Archie, and infuriates everyone else. The one person missing is Archie’s boss, Nero Wolfe (Death of an Art Collector, 2019, etc.), and fans will breathe a sigh of relief when he appears at Marjorie’s door, debriefs Archie, notices a telltale clue, prepares dinner for everyone, sleeps on his discovery, and arranges a meeting of all parties in Marjorie’s living room in which he names the killer.
The parts with Nero Wolfe, the only character Goldsborough brings to life, are almost worth waiting for.Pub Date: May 19, 2020
ISBN: 978-1-5040-5988-6
Page Count: 248
Publisher: Mysterious Press
Review Posted Online: March 1, 2020
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 15, 2020
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