Colorful, bustling, and stuffed to the brim with endless complications and a throwaway killer.
Theophania Bogart, a fugitive from British high society, finds that her second case takes her outside her circle of friends but not out of her embattled San Francisco neighborhood.
Who could possibly have wanted to shoot attorney Katrina Dermody to death as she sat in the Tesla she’d made sure everyone in Fabian Gardens knew about? Theo, who discovers her body, knows she can start with the fellow tenants who opposed predatory developer Amos Noble’s determined attempt to plant a condo in the neighborhood. Her suspicions intensify when she insinuates herself into Katrina’s office and emerges with a folder documenting the juicy secrets of every tenant from Sabina Talbot, the daughter of anti-condo demonstrators Guillermo and Ruth D’Allessio (child out of wedlock), to wine company owners Jesus and Luis Aguardo (sale of liquor to teen who drank himself to death) to Angela Lacerda (high school abortion) to Theo herself, a photographer who changed her name and fled the press when her father, a noted English portraitist, stabbed her mother to death. As if that weren’t a rich enough field, a visit from priest/spymaster Sergei Wolf alerts Theo to the existence of a venerable espionage organization spanning generations whose members include both her beloved grandfather Clement Pryce-Fitton and Katrina. Where will the complications end? Not even at the Acknowledgments, whose first line identifies a real-life mystery a good deal more lighthearted than the higher-stakes case Theo’s plunged into.
Colorful, bustling, and stuffed to the brim with endless complications and a throwaway killer.Pub Date: Nov. 3, 2020
ISBN: 978-1-25-011620-8
Page Count: 304
Publisher: Minotaur
Review Posted Online: July 28, 2020
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 15, 2020
Neither the characters nor the mystery makes nearly as much of an impression as the setting and the cuisine.
More accurately, Four Murders Most French, since none of the homicides entangling Julia Child’s circle in postwar Paris seems any more Gallic than the others.
Joining Julia at a tasting during a monthly meeting of her wine club at L’École du Cordon Bleu, her neighbor, friend, and amanuensis Tabitha Knight is on hand to watch Chef Richard Beauchêne taste his very last wine, an 1893 Volnay Clos de la Rougeotte that he samples just before keeling over. Cyanide, thinks Tabitha, whose determination to stay away from anymore murders is on a collision course with her sense that she’s channeling Agatha Christie. Although Inspecteur Étienne Merveille wholeheartedly endorses her reluctance to get involved, she’s left with little choice after she recognizes Louis Loyer at another event as the chef who was arguing with Beauchêne on the evening of his last libation only moments before Loyer uncorks an 1871 Sauternes that turns out to be his last round as well. Assuming that the two poisonings (more will follow) can’t be a coincidence, Tabitha wonders if it’s a coincidence that she’s been on the scene for both of them and begins to make a cautious list of other people who were present for both deaths. Considering that she’s not much more interested in the suspects than her author, Tabitha does a highly effective job of identifying the culprit and tipping her hand in a way that forces her once again to employ her Swiss Army knife to rescue herself from certain death.
Neither the characters nor the mystery makes nearly as much of an impression as the setting and the cuisine.Pub Date: April 23, 2024
ISBN: 9781496739629
Page Count: 304
Publisher: Kensington
Review Posted Online: Jan. 20, 2024
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 15, 2024
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
A surprising number of suspects for a 40-year-old killing keep the bickering cast of characters hiding secrets.
A mystery from the past threatens a farmer’s future.
Shiloh Bellamy left a lucrative job in California to rescue her family farm in Cherry Glen, Michigan, which had fallen into disrepair due to her father’s lack of interest. An unexpected inheritance helped get things back in shape and pays the salary of her farm manager, Chesney, who lives in the farmhouse with her younger sister, Whit, while Shiloh happily lives in a cabin in the woods. Thanksgiving dinner at the farmhouse brings some surprises. Whit doesn’t show up, and Chesney reveals she’s worried about her. Shiloh’s boyfriend, Sheriff Milan Penbrook, brings his acerbic mother, who suggests she should be thinking about marriage and babies. Milan isn’t happy about Shiloh’s former boyfriend Quinn Killian attending. Her father, Sully, arrives with unpleasant Connie Baskins and stuns Shiloh by announcing they’re engaged. The veiled hostilities at the table seem minor when Shiloh’s pug, Huckleberry, chases her chickens into a corner of the orchard and seizes a bone they unearthed, which is clearly human. The body it comes from is that of James Ripley, who vanished before Shiloh was born. Unfortunately, the farm is in the district of Chief Randy, who is Quinn’s father and dislikes both Shiloh and Milan. Chief Randy is also pretty lazy and closes the case, declaring the killer to be Shiloh’s grandmother, who believed Ripley murdered her daughter. Sure her adored grandmother is innocent, Shiloh investigates on her own, putting herself in danger from the real killer.
A surprising number of suspects for a 40-year-old killing keep the bickering cast of characters hiding secrets.Pub Date: Sept. 30, 2025
ISBN: 9781728273082
Page Count: 312
Publisher: Poisoned Pen
Review Posted Online: Aug. 15, 2025
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 15, 2025
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