A lighthearted, formulaic, but ultimately satisfying mystery novel with a charming heroine.
A middle-aged mom decides to track down the arsonist who burned down her best friend’s house.
Nell Letterly, the brave heroine of Star’s (Murder in the Dojo, 2011) newest mystery tale, is just starting to get over her estranged husband when a freak accident rocks her hometown of Boulder, Colorado: A fire tears through the house of her best friend, Alice Albright. Alice had been running a struggling art gallery there, and suspicions begin to arise that she was selling newly legalized marijuana—without a license. Nell concludes, “I had to do something…I was going to free Alice from suspicion,” launching her into a twisted web of strange connections and revelations about the townspeople as she conducts her own investigation into the crime. Soon, bodies start turning up in the wake of the fire, including an old friend of Nell’s husband, and her determination to solve the puzzle intensifies. When Alice disappears in the middle of Nell’s search for the perpetrator, she starts to question her friend’s part in the crime. Is Alice an innocent bystander or is there something more sinister behind her innocent exterior? Nell is a scrappy private eye. “No wonder I had to solve his case for him,” she thinks after meeting one of the incompetent detectives working on the investigation. Nell chases down her leads—from the shady French cook who seems to know all the victims, to the spurned ex-wife of a famous painter—while juggling her responsibilities to her teenage daughter, and her own mixed emotions about her husband who abandoned her several months earlier. There’s a cinematic quality to this fast-paced, straightforward, easily digestible thriller, and it’s worth a read just to get close to the clever, “positively old-fashioned” Nell, who though out of touch as she might be, is an admirable, and relatable protagonist. At one point, she muses about pot: “Some thought it was nirvana, others thought it was evil incarnate. I just thought it was a poor substitute for meditation. Of course, I didn’t have experience with any stimulants other than meditation and heavy martial arts.” Star’s latest Nell Letterly mystery is like eating a slice of cake: nothing too substantial there, but enjoyable and delicious nonetheless, a guilty pleasure of a book perfect for the beach.
A lighthearted, formulaic, but ultimately satisfying mystery novel with a charming heroine.Pub Date: N/A
ISBN: N/A
Page Count: -
Publisher: D.M. Kreg Publishing
Review Posted Online: April 25, 2016
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
The emotions run high, the conversations run deep, and the relationships ebb and flow with grace.
When tragedy strikes, a mother and daughter forge a new life.
Morgan felt obligated to marry her high school sweetheart, Chris, when she got pregnant with their daughter, Clara. But she secretly got along much better with Chris’ thoughtful best friend, Jonah, who was dating her sister, Jenny. Now her life as a stay-at-home parent has left her feeling empty but not ungrateful for what she has. Jonah and Jenny eventually broke up, but years later they had a one-night stand and Jenny got pregnant with their son, Elijah. Now Jonah is back in town, engaged to Jenny, and working at the local high school as Clara’s teacher. Clara dreams of being an actress and has a crush on Miller, who plans to go to film school, but her father doesn't approve. It doesn’t help that Miller already has a jealous girlfriend who stalks him via text from college. But Clara and Morgan’s home life changes radically when Chris and Jenny are killed in an accident, revealing long-buried secrets and forcing Morgan to reevaluate the life she chose when early motherhood forced her hand. Feeling betrayed by the adults in her life, Clara marches forward, acting both responsible and rebellious as she navigates her teenage years without her father and her aunt, while Jonah and Morgan's relationship evolves in the wake of the accident. Front-loaded with drama, the story leaves plenty of room for the mother and daughter to unpack their feelings and decide what’s next.
The emotions run high, the conversations run deep, and the relationships ebb and flow with grace.Pub Date: Dec. 10, 2019
ISBN: 978-1-5420-1642-1
Page Count: 400
Publisher: Montlake Romance
Review Posted Online: Oct. 13, 2019
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Nov. 1, 2019
BOOK TO SCREEN
BOOK TO SCREEN
A tasty, if not always tasteful, tale of supernatural mayhem that fans of King and Crichton alike will enjoy.
Are we not men? We are—well, ask Bigfoot, as Brooks does in this delightful yarn, following on his bestseller World War Z(2006).
A zombie apocalypse is one thing. A volcanic eruption is quite another, for, as the journalist who does a framing voice-over narration for Brooks’ latest puts it, when Mount Rainier popped its cork, “it was the psychological aspect, the hyperbole-fueled hysteria that had ended up killing the most people.” Maybe, but the sasquatches whom the volcano displaced contributed to the statistics, too, if only out of self-defense. Brooks places the epicenter of the Bigfoot war in a high-tech hideaway populated by the kind of people you might find in a Jurassic Park franchise: the schmo who doesn’t know how to do much of anything but tries anyway, the well-intentioned bleeding heart, the know-it-all intellectual who turns out to know the wrong things, the immigrant with a tough backstory and an instinct for survival. Indeed, the novel does double duty as a survival manual, packed full of good advice—for instance, try not to get wounded, for “injury turns you from a giver to a taker. Taking up our resources, our time to care for you.” Brooks presents a case for making room for Bigfoot in the world while peppering his narrative with timely social criticism about bad behavior on the human side of the conflict: The explosion of Rainier might have been better forecast had the president not slashed the budget of the U.S. Geological Survey, leading to “immediate suspension of the National Volcano Early Warning System,” and there’s always someone around looking to monetize the natural disaster and the sasquatch-y onslaught that follows. Brooks is a pro at building suspense even if it plays out in some rather spectacularly yucky episodes, one involving a short spear that takes its name from “the sucking sound of pulling it out of the dead man’s heart and lungs.” Grossness aside, it puts you right there on the scene.
A tasty, if not always tasteful, tale of supernatural mayhem that fans of King and Crichton alike will enjoy.Pub Date: June 16, 2020
ISBN: 978-1-9848-2678-7
Page Count: 304
Publisher: Del Rey/Ballantine
Review Posted Online: Feb. 9, 2020
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 1, 2020
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK TO SCREEN
© 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.
