A compelling murder tale set in a thoroughly realized historical Shanghai.
Raymond (Madness, 2015, etc.) explores the Chinese underworld in this mystery, the first in a series.
In 1928, Shanghai is far more brutish than the wildest of the West: “Wicked, brazen Shanghai, a fabulous place, peopled with swindlers, newly-minted millionaires, titled expatriates and their sad, restless wives, gangsters, beggars, and whores. Indeed, it was easy to make money here, and just as easy to lose a fortune.” Zephyr Davies, the Harvard-educated scion of a wealthy San Francisco family, has spent five years in the city, pursuing wealth and adventure. Just as he is beginning to lose his sense of purpose and contemplate a return to America, a routine favor for a friend—to locate and return a prized family artifact—quickly devolves into a murder mystery that requires Davies’ skills as a competent (if amateur) detective. The artifact in question is a staff known as “the clouded twilight,” an object whose importance to Chinese history is likened to that of Betsy Ross’ first American flag. The case involves Monica Marshall, a half-Chinese woman who refuses to speak; Elder Brother, an opium smuggler considered the most feared man in China; and Wong Gou Sing, the mischievous clerk of a curio shop whose fate is inextricably tied with Davies’. Raymond’s ornate prose beautifully enlivens the world of the novel, luxuriating in the details of its physical setting: “The remarkable motorcar had an open body made of tulip wood, and an impossibly long, polished aluminum hood that culminated in a radiator crowned by a graceful, flying stork.” The book reads more like a historical epic than a normal crime mystery, delighting in the uniqueness of each character and location rather than relying on the shorthand tropes of the genre. Raymond writes in that sweet spot that celebrates the exotic without fetishizing it, making it familiar without watering it down. With three more books in the series already published, the author has provided a captivating world in which new readers may lose themselves for a while.
A compelling murder tale set in a thoroughly realized historical Shanghai.Pub Date: Dec. 17, 2014
ISBN: 978-1-5055-8443-1
Page Count: 396
Publisher: CreateSpace
Review Posted Online: April 3, 2017
Kirkus Reviews Issue: June 1, 2017
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
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
A smoothly written contemporary caper paired with a murder mystery and a little meet-the-Jetsons futurism. No one does...
Written under her real name and her pseudonym, two books in one from megaselling Roberts/Robb.
Book one: Laine Tavish, gorgeous redhead and owner of a small-town antique store, isn’t about to tell the cops that she knew the old man who was hit by a car right outside her shop. Just before he took his dying breath, she recognized Willy Young, partner in crime to Big Jack O’Hara, her father. Their biggest heist: millions of dollars in hot diamonds. Her father went to prison, but not Willy, whose last words were “left it for you.” What did he leave—and where? Enter Max Gannon, insurance investigator and all-around stud, with thick, wavy, run-your-fingers-through-it hair, tawny eyes that remind Laine of a tiger, and a delicious Georgia drawl. He beds Laine pronto, and they solve the case. But some of the diamonds are still missing. . . . Book two: it’s 50 years later, and New York traffic is slower than ever: just try getting a helicab on a rainy day. But Samantha Gannon, author of a bestseller called Hot Rocks based on her grandparents’ experiences in the long-ago case, eventually makes it home from the airport to find her house-sitter Andrea dead, throat cut. Another investigation begins, spearheaded by Eve Dallas, a tough-talking but very appealing New York cop married to Roarke, a rich, eccentric genius who just barely manages to stay on the right side of the law. Is the murderer after the rest of the diamonds? And is he or she related to the master thief who betrayed Samantha’s great-grandfather? There are more burning questions, and Eve wants answers—but, first, get Central on the telelink and program the Autochef for pastrami on rye.
A smoothly written contemporary caper paired with a murder mystery and a little meet-the-Jetsons futurism. No one does Suspense Lite better than Nora.Pub Date: Sept. 1, 2003
ISBN: 0-399-15106-0
Page Count: 448
Publisher: Putnam
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 15, 2003
© Copyright 2025 Kirkus Media LLC. All Rights Reserved.
Follow
Popular in this Genre
We can’t wait for you to join Kirkus!
It’s free and takes less than 10 seconds!
Already have an account? Log in.
OR
Sign in with GoogleTrouble signing in? Retrieve credentials.
Welcome Back!
OR
Sign in with GoogleTrouble signing in? Retrieve credentials.
