A limited but highly proficient exercise in deduction by a forgotten author: a welcome rediscovery.
Murder strikes a Pullman coach bound for Mexico City from San Antonio, and then strikes again and again in this reprint from 1935.
The third of six adventures featuring U.S. Treasury agent Hugh Rennert finds the trip already underway after agent Edgar Graves has apparently fainted (he’s actually been given a lethal injection of nicotine) on the departure platform back in the San Antonio train station. Hardly have the bland characters—cotton mill owner Jackson Saul King, albino William Searcey, novelty salesman Preston Radcott, journalist Ed Spahr, French political activist Paul Xavier Jeanes, unflappable Trescinda Talcott, San Antonio realtor Eduardo Torner, and Long Island socialite Coralie Van Syle—introduced themselves to Rennert and each other that one of them is treated to another dose of nicotine. Rennert is businesslike but so self-effacing that you have to wonder if he’ll finish questioning the suspects before the next victim dies. The murders are clearly connected to the kidnapping of 3-year-old Antonio Montes, who was found dead in a burning car crash soon after being taken from his wealthy father, and they may well be connected to a mysterious speech King’s wife, who he says got off the train earlier even though the porter never saw her leave, overheard back in San Antonio. Downing (1902-1974) doles out Mexican local color in small but expertly teasing doses, gets excellent mileage out of a cheap stickpin and several other physical clues, and produces a surprisingly varied chain of incidents in the course of whittling down the passenger list.
A limited but highly proficient exercise in deduction by a forgotten author: a welcome rediscovery.Pub Date: Dec. 1, 2020
ISBN: 978-1-61316-179-1
Page Count: 285
Publisher: Penzler Publishers
Review Posted Online: Sept. 15, 2020
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Oct. 1, 2020
A top-class cozy infused with dry wit and charming characters who draw you in and leave you wanting more, please.
Four residents of Coopers Chase, a British retirement village, compete with the police to solve a murder in this debut novel.
The Thursday Murder Club started out with a group of septuagenarians working on old murder cases culled from the files of club founder Elizabeth Best’s friend Penny Gray, a former police officer who's now comatose in the village's nursing home. Elizabeth used to have an unspecified job, possibly as a spy, that has left her with a large network of helpful sources. Joyce Meadowcroft is a former nurse who chronicles their deeds. Psychiatrist Ibrahim Arif and well-known political firebrand Ron Ritchie complete the group. They charm Police Constable Donna De Freitas, who, visiting to give a talk on safety at Coopers Chase, finds the residents sharp as tacks. Built with drug money on the grounds of a convent, Coopers Chase is a high-end development conceived by loathsome Ian Ventham and maintained by dangerous crook Tony Curran, who’s about to be fired and replaced with wary but willing Bogdan Jankowski. Ventham has big plans for the future—as soon as he’s removed the nuns' bodies from the cemetery. When Curran is murdered, DCI Chris Hudson gets the case, but Elizabeth uses her influence to get the ambitious De Freitas included, giving the Thursday Club a police source. What follows is a fascinating primer in detection as British TV personality Osman allows the members to use their diverse skills to solve a series of interconnected crimes.
A top-class cozy infused with dry wit and charming characters who draw you in and leave you wanting more, please.Pub Date: Sept. 22, 2020
ISBN: 978-1-98-488096-3
Page Count: 368
Publisher: Pamela Dorman/Viking
Review Posted Online: June 30, 2020
Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 15, 2020
Intrigue, murder, and vengeance make for a darkly enjoyable read.
A woman’s life takes a stunning turn and a wall comes tumbling down in this tense Cold War spy drama.
In Berlin in 1989, the wall is about to crumble, and Anne Simpson’s husband, Stefan Koehler, goes missing. She is a translator working with refugees from the communist bloc, and he is a piano tuner who travels around Europe with orchestras. Or so he claims. German intelligence service the BND and America’s CIA bring her in for questioning, wrongly thinking she’s protecting him. Soon she begins to learn more about Stefan, whom she had met in the Netherlands a few years ago. She realizes he’s a “gregarious musician with easy charm who collected friends like a beachcomber collects shells, keeping a few, discarding most.” Police find his wallet in a canal and his prized zither in nearby bushes but not his body. Has he been murdered? What’s going on? And why does the BND care? If Stefan is alive, he’s in deep trouble, because he’s believed to be working for the Stasi. She’s told “the dead have a way of showing up. It is only the living who hide.” And she’s quite believable when she wonders, “Can you grieve for someone who betrayed you?” Smart and observant, she notes that the reaction by one of her interrogators is “as false as his toupee. Obvious, uncalled for, and easily put on.” Lurking behind the scenes is the Matchmaker, who specializes in finding women—“American. Divorced. Unhappy,” and possibly having access to Western secrets—who will fall for one of his Romeos. Anne is the perfect fit. “The matchmaker turned love into tradecraft,” a CIA agent tells her. But espionage is an amoral business where duty trumps decency, and “deploring the morality of spies is like deploring violence in boxers.” It’s a sentiment John le Carré would have endorsed, but Anne may have the final word.
Intrigue, murder, and vengeance make for a darkly enjoyable read.Pub Date: Feb. 1, 2022
ISBN: 978-1-64313-865-7
Page Count: 352
Publisher: Pegasus Crime
Review Posted Online: Jan. 11, 2022
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 1, 2022
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