Despite its lack of tension, this is an enjoyable mystery with a touch of pathos and a final, unexpected twist.
In this 12th volume of Kiernan-Lewis’ mystery series, American expatriate and amateur detective Maggie Newberry sees her husband charged with murder after he discovers a corpse in the Domaine St-Buvard vineyard.
Maggie has convinced her elderly parents to move to France so that she can better help her mother, Elspeth, care for her dad, John, whose symptoms of Alzheimer’s disease have worsened. Maggie drives back and forth between the vineyard where she, her French husband, Laurent Dernier, and their two small children live, and the nearby city of Aix-en-Provence, where her parents reside in a rented apartment. After two harrowing days of problem-solving in Aix, she returns home, only to be awakened by Laurent in the middle of the night. He’s found the lifeless body of Henri Dupree, who works for him at the vineyard, and the police are on the way. When police detective Roger Bedard asks Laurent to return with him to the station, Maggie knows that her spouse is in trouble, despite his reassurances. Although there are a few other potential suspects, the police have fixated on Laurent, who has a shady past as a successful con artist. Kiernan-Lewis ably catches newcomers up regarding the series’ regular characters and backstories, even as she introduces this episode’s new players, which include a diverse collection of refugees who’ve been given sanctuary at the L’Abbaye de Sainte-Trinité, run by Frère Jean, a monk who’s wrestling with personal demons. The travails of Maggie’s parents add a poignant side story to a narrative propelled more by relationships than by action. A variety of individual, secondary dramas keep this cozy mystery engaging, despite its slow pace. The author also constantly rotates locales, from city to vineyard estate to monastery, which gives the narrative a sense of forward momentum. The vivid descriptions of French cuisine, and especially the region’s delectable pastries, are a series trademark, and, once again, a definite bonus.
Despite its lack of tension, this is an enjoyable mystery with a touch of pathos and a final, unexpected twist.Pub Date: April 10, 2018
ISBN: 978-1-987723-06-9
Page Count: 362
Publisher: CreateSpace Independent Publishing Platform
Review Posted Online: March 1, 2022
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
BOOK REVIEW
Forget about solving all these crimes; the signal triumph here is (spoiler) the heroine’s survival.
Another sweltering month in Charlotte, another boatload of mysteries past and present for overworked, overstressed forensic anthropologist Temperance Brennan.
A week after the night she chases but fails to catch a mysterious trespasser outside her town house, some unknown party texts Tempe four images of a corpse that looks as if it’s been chewed by wild hogs, because it has been. Showboat Medical Examiner Margot Heavner makes it clear that, breaking with her department’s earlier practice (The Bone Collection, 2016, etc.), she has no intention of calling in Tempe as a consultant and promptly identifies the faceless body herself as that of a young Asian man. Nettled by several errors in Heavner’s analysis, and even more by her willingness to share the gory details at a press conference, Tempe launches her own investigation, which is not so much off the books as against the books. Heavner isn’t exactly mollified when Tempe, aided by retired police detective Skinny Slidell and a host of experts, puts a name to the dead man. But the hints of other crimes Tempe’s identification uncovers, particularly crimes against children, spur her on to redouble her efforts despite the new M.E.’s splenetic outbursts. Before he died, it seems, Felix Vodyanov was linked to a passenger ferry that sank in 1994, an even earlier U.S. government project to research biological agents that could control human behavior, the hinky spiritual retreat Sparkling Waters, the dark web site DeepUnder, and the disappearances of at least four schoolchildren, two of whom have also turned up dead. And why on earth was Vodyanov carrying Tempe’s own contact information? The mounting evidence of ever more and ever worse skulduggery will pull Tempe deeper and deeper down what even she sees as a rabbit hole before she confronts a ringleader implicated in “Drugs. Fraud. Breaking and entering. Arson. Kidnapping. How does attempted murder sound?”
Forget about solving all these crimes; the signal triumph here is (spoiler) the heroine’s survival.Pub Date: March 17, 2020
ISBN: 978-1-9821-3888-2
Page Count: 352
Publisher: Scribner
Review Posted Online: Dec. 22, 2019
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 15, 2020
More than any of his earlier cases, the comatose hero’s 26th adventure bears the hallmarks of a formal detective story.
Wyoming Game and Fish Warden Joe Pickett has been shot plenty of times before. But this time may be the last.
As Joe hovers between life and death in a Billings hospital, Box indicates that Dorn Peddy and James Dale O’Bryan are the two men who ambushed him, shot him, and left him for dead. But he doesn’t reveal who hired them or why. That’s left up to Joe’s three daughters: bird-abatement firm chief executive Sheridan, Bozeman private eye April, and University of Wyoming undergrad Lucy. Since the man who reported the incident to the Twelve Sleep County Sheriff’s Department has disappeared, the most that newly appointed Sheriff Steve Sondergard can do is to warn Sheridan and her sisters away from the case. But the fact that both the shooters and the witness seem to have come from one of exactly three places presents an obvious appeal to the younger Picketts, who plan to each visit one place and question the owners simultaneously before they can warn each other that anyone’s coming. The only problem is that all the possible suspects—billionaire Michael Thompson and his wife, Brandy, of the Double Diamond Ranch; ranchers John and Shelby Bucholz, of the Bucholz Cattle Company; and secretive sisters Lisa and Lainie McElwee, of McElwee Land and Cattle Ranch—act equally guilty. As Box unspools a series of flashbacks showing what Joe was up to in the weeks before the ambush, one question assumes paramount importance: Can Joe’s daughters identify which of them is behind the plot to murder their father before the hired gunmen visit the hospital and try again?
More than any of his earlier cases, the comatose hero’s 26th adventure bears the hallmarks of a formal detective story.Pub Date: Feb. 24, 2026
ISBN: 9780593851098
Page Count: 352
Publisher: Putnam
Review Posted Online: Nov. 22, 2025
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 1, 2026
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