An entertaining and suspenseful detective tale.
In this mystery, a wealthy wife hires a private eye to investigate her husband.
Jade Cavendish would give anything for a break. After she dumps her cheating boyfriend and has to move back in with her parents, the last thing she needs is a ruined career before it even starts. Her father’s retirement means she has inherited the Beachtown Detective Agency, but she struggles to land a client and worries about what this means for her pessimistic viewpoint. Finally, a client who could make or break Jade’s career walks in: the rich and powerful Gina Rose. Jade takes an assignment involving fraud and Gina’s husband, Bert Darlington (“I not only want the proof he’s been using my money for his personal gain, but I also want to put the spotlight on his lies. In a sense, he’s been cheating on me financially for eight months. I want him to pay for what he’s done”). Meanwhile, a villain known as the Amorous Assailant is attacking women along the boardwalk. Jade’s findings leave Gina disappointed and disgruntled, so the gumshoe takes a break from her fraud investigation. For some extra cash, she teaches a self-defense class with her ex-boyfriend. While his childish antics upset her, she realizes that she has gained new friends from the class. Zoe Wright, one of her new pals, reports on the Amorous Assailant via her blog, but her amateur reporting and investigative tactics give Jade more problems than solutions. Even more troubling is Gina’s strange behavior. Jade soon discovers that the wealthy will do anything to keep their money, power, and secrets. After a murder is committed, she finds it hard to figure out where to find the truth. Ambrose’s mystery is thrilling and unpredictable. But while the story is intriguing and the large cast of characters, engaging, Jade sometimes fails to propel the plot. Her actions are often driven by those around her, and this does little to create high stakes. Still, the protagonist’s fun voice and compassion for others are appealing. The author shows how much Jade empathizes with Gina, Zoe, and the Amorous Assailant’s victims, which gives the narrative a grounding and realism that bring a spark to the story. Readers will enjoy this gripping mystery.
An entertaining and suspenseful detective tale.Pub Date: Oct. 18, 2022
ISBN: N/A
Page Count: 304
Publisher: Satori
Review Posted Online: Sept. 26, 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
Don’t feel that your current news feed is disturbing enough? Penny has just what you need.
A sequel to The Grey Wolf (2024) that begins with the earlier novel’s last line: “We have a problem.” And what a problem it is.
Now that Chief Inspector Armand Gamache and his allies in and out of the Sûreté du Québec have saved Canada’s water supply from poisoning on a grand scale, you might think they were entitled to some rest and relaxation in Three Pines. No such luck. Don Joseph Moretti, the Sixth Family head who ordered the hit-and-run on biologist Charles Langlois that nearly killed Gamache as well, is plotting still more criminal enterprises, and Gamache can’t be sure that Chief Inspector Evelyn Tardiff, who’s been cozying up to Moretti in order to get the goods on him, hasn’t gone over to the dark side herself. In fact, Gamache’s uncertainty about Evelyn sets the pattern for much of what follows, for another review of one of Langlois’ notebooks reveals a plot so monstrous that it’s impossible to be sure who’s not in on it. Is it really true, as paranoid online rumors have it, that “Canada is about to attack the U.S.”? Or is it really the other way around, as the discovery of War Plan Red would have it? As the threats loom larger and larger, they raise questions as to whether the Black Wolf, the evil power behind them, is Moretti, disgraced former Deputy Prime Minister Marcus Lauzon, whom Gamache has arranged to have released from prison, or someone even more highly placed. A brief introductory note dating Penny’s delivery of the uncannily prophetic manuscript to September 2024 will do little to assuage the anxieties of concerned readers.
Don’t feel that your current news feed is disturbing enough? Penny has just what you need.Pub Date: Oct. 28, 2025
ISBN: 9781250328175
Page Count: 384
Publisher: Minotaur
Review Posted Online: July 17, 2025
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 15, 2025
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