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
Enough clues, red herrings, and false endings to make readers feel that the Orient Express has put out to sea.
A luxury liner bound for New York in 1924 becomes the scene of a twisty golden age pastiche.
When an unnamed third-class passenger discovers the body of an elderly man at the bottom of an exterior flight of stairs aboard the Endeavour, Capt. McCrory insists it must be an accident. But James Temple, a Scotland Yard detective who just happens to be aboard, says that no one would have ventured to the outdoor steps in the rain without a coat, so the death should be treated as suspicious. Unable to stop Temple from investigating, McCrory assigns ship’s officer Timothy Birch to accompany him, and Birch promptly becomes the world’s most unwilling Dr. Watson, constantly battling Temple over theories and procedures. Anxious that they have only four days to find a potential killer before the ship docks and lets its 2,000 passengers roam free in New York, he’s especially infuriated at the leisurely pace marked by Temple’s bromide, “Facts before witnesses.” There’s reason to sympathize with Temple, because the suspects in first and second class (the only classes that matter in this ultra-class-conscious world) are cardboard cutouts—the successful banker, his trophy wife, the aspiring artists, the gallery owner—who are much less interesting than the secrets they’re hiding. In his most anachronistic development, author Hindle shows Birch, unlike the imperturbable sidekicks he echoes, sunk in grief over his vanished daughter, Amelia, and his estranged wife, Kate, who left him after Amelia disappeared during one of his ocean voyages. He’d do anything to get his daughter back, he tells Temple, and his determination leads to the biggest surprise of all.
Enough clues, red herrings, and false endings to make readers feel that the Orient Express has put out to sea.Pub Date: Sept. 29, 2026
ISBN: 9798217185740
Page Count: 464
Publisher: Dutton
Review Posted Online: July 20, 2026
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 15, 2026
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
© Copyright 2026 Kirkus Media LLC. All Rights Reserved.
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