by Tania Bayard ‧ RELEASE DATE: March 1, 2019
Historical details drive this period puzzle, whose heroine provides a steady presence against a backdrop of characters...
A lethal fire sends the French king into a state, forcing the queen once more to seek sleuthing help from a scribe who straddles the royal and everyday worlds.
Though merely a woman and not even a member of the court, Christine de Pizan has long been admitted to the presence of Queen Isabeau, a privilege that was invaluable when Christine discovered the identity of a murderer close to the royals (In the Presence of Evil, 2018). Inspired by Christine’s success with the previous investigation, Queen Isabeau once again relies on the scribe’s resourcefulness when she calls upon Christine to begin another informal investigation. The king hasn’t been himself since a recent ball, when a torch thrown from the musicians’ area killed four men. The queen, who doesn’t believe the rumors blaming the once-popular Duke of Orléans, wants to learn the true identity of the killer. Much to her mother Francesca’s horror, Christine seeks support from her clever friend Marion, whose excellent connections depend at least partly on her work as a prostitute. But Francesca doesn’t have much social capital with Christine after bringing home a strange woman who appears determined to antagonize Christine’s otherwise well-behaved children. The woman, who Francesca explains is Martin du Bois’ wife, Klara, appears to have been abandoned by her husband. So Christine and Marion add trying to locate him to their to-do list. Christine suspects that the secret of the king’s sorry state and the fatal torch-throwing may lie in the queen’s inner circle of misfits, who are largely ignored by others in the court. She makes a special effort to get to know Alips, the queen’s dwarf, who may be the key to unraveling the mystery.
Historical details drive this period puzzle, whose heroine provides a steady presence against a backdrop of characters constantly fighting against their time and stations.Pub Date: March 1, 2019
ISBN: 978-0-7278-8843-3
Page Count: 224
Publisher: Severn House
Review Posted Online: Dec. 10, 2018
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 1, 2019
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by Kathy Reichs ‧ RELEASE DATE: March 17, 2020
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
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by C.J. Box ‧ RELEASE DATE: July 28, 2015
A suspenseful, professional-grade north country procedural whose heroine, a deft mix of compassion and attitude, would be...
Box takes another break from his highly successful Joe Pickett series (Stone Cold, 2014, etc.) for a stand-alone about a police detective, a developmentally delayed boy, and a package everyone in North Dakota wants to grab.
Cassandra Dewell can’t leave Montana’s Lewis and Clark County fast enough for her new job as chief investigator for Jon Kirkbride, sheriff of Bakken County. She leaves behind no memories worth keeping: her husband is dead, her boss has made no bones about disliking her, and she’s looking forward to new responsibilities and the higher salary underwritten by North Dakota’s sudden oil boom. But Bakken County has its own issues. For one thing, it’s cold—a whole lot colder than the coldest weather Cassie’s ever imagined. For another, the job she turns out to have been hired for—leading an investigation her new boss doesn’t feel he can entrust to his own force—makes her queasy. The biggest problem, though, is one she doesn’t know about until it slaps her in the face. A fatal car accident that was anything but accidental has jarred loose a stash of methamphetamines and cash that’s become the center of a battle between the Sons of Freedom, Bakken County’s traditional drug sellers, and MS-13, the Salvadorian upstarts who are muscling in on their territory. It’s a setup that leaves scant room for law enforcement officers or for Kyle Westergaard, the 12-year-old paperboy damaged since birth by fetal alcohol syndrome, who’s walked away from the wreck with a prize all too many people would kill for.
A suspenseful, professional-grade north country procedural whose heroine, a deft mix of compassion and attitude, would be welcome to return and tie up the gaping loose end Box leaves. The unrelenting cold makes this the perfect beach read.Pub Date: July 28, 2015
ISBN: 978-0-312-58321-7
Page Count: 272
Publisher: Minotaur
Review Posted Online: April 21, 2015
Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 15, 2015
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