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
Fast-moving excitement with a satisfying finish.
The feds must protect an accused criminal and an orphaned girl.
Maybe you’ve met him before as protagonist of The 6:20 Man (2022): Ex-Army Ranger Travis Devine, who’d had the dubious fortune to tangle with “the girl on the train,” is now assigned by his homeland security boss to protect Danny Glass, who's awaiting trial on multiple RICO charges in Washington state. Devine has what it takes: He “was a closer, snooper, fixer, investigator,” and, when necessary, a killer. These skills are on full display as the deaths of three key witnesses grind justice to a temporary halt. Glass has a 12-year-old niece, Betsy Odom, and each is the other’s only living relative—her parents recently died of an apparent drug overdose. The FBI has temporary guardianship of Betsy, who's a handful. She tells Travis that though she’s not yet 13, she's 28 in “life-shit years.” The financially well-heeled Glass wants to be her legal guardian with an eye to eventual adoption, but what are his real motives? And what happens to her if he's convicted? Meanwhile, Betsy insists that her parents never touched drugs, and she begs Travis to find out how they really died. This becomes part of a mission that oozes danger. The small town of Ricketts has a woman mayor who’s full of charm on the surface, but deeply corrupt and deadly when crossed. She may be linked to a subversive group called "12/24/65," as in 1865, when the Ku Klux Klan beast was born. Blood flows, bombs explode, and people perish, both good guys and not-so-good guys. Readers might ponder why in fiction as well as in life, it sometimes seems necessary for many to die so one may live. And what about the girl on the train? She's not necessary to the plot, but she's a fun addition as she pops in and out of the pages, occasionally leaving notes for Travis. Maybe she still wants him dead.
Fast-moving excitement with a satisfying finish.Pub Date: Nov. 12, 2024
ISBN: 9781538757901
Page Count: 432
Publisher: Grand Central Publishing
Review Posted Online: Sept. 14, 2024
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Oct. 15, 2024
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