An often thrilling novel that’s likely to satisfy mystery buffs.
In Casey’s novel, a police detective investigates a killing in a small town full of secrets.
The story follows the lives of several citizens of fictional Granville, Connecticut, and how they each intersect with the recent horrific murder of local Ann Wheeler. Bradley Davis is a library assistant and voyeur who watches his neighbors from afar between visits to his alcoholic, psychologically abusive mother. When he’s caught peeping by the police, Det. Gerard Mallory asks him if he’d ever spied on the murder victim, who was a regular at the library; Davis denies it. When the cop tells him he’s willing to ignore the arrest if he sees a local therapist, Dr. Caroline Singer, Davis agrees. The narrative also follows Russell Garner, who was only recently let out of jail after being identified as a victim of wrongful incarceration, and it offers engaging characterization: “Institutionalization had taken something from his spirit. He had not found immunity from loneliness. He could not imagine a favorite chair, fireside, or family life.” A subplot involving an illicit affair between real estate speculator John Addison and marathoner Maggie Hawkins, both of whom Davis also knows, leads to a dark place. All these characters’ lives tangle into a knot that Det. Mallory must untie. Casey also includes the point of view of Davis’ therapist, which serves as a useful narrative device, as it allows the reader further insight into the voyeur’s mind. As Dr. Singer’s sessions progress, new revelations come to light, and a twist at the book’s climax greatly impacts Det. Mallory’s investigation. Overall, the work is well structured, divided into four distinct parts that tell the story through a variety of third-person perspectives, including those of Mallory, Davis, and Garner. Good character development and fast pacing add to the book’s appeal, as do some moments of levity that effectively vary the tone. The book has some graphic scenes, which may make readers wish it had a content warning at the start. The conclusion, however, provides a good sense of closure.
An often thrilling novel that’s likely to satisfy mystery buffs.Pub Date: June 15, 2024
ISBN: 9798988717355
Page Count: 294
Publisher: Heresy Press
Review Posted Online: April 30, 2024
Kirkus Reviews Issue: June 15, 2024
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
Everything you’d expect from Grisham, and this time something more.
After more than three decades of producing bestselling legal thrillers, Grisham tries his hand at a whodunit.
Eleanor Barnett wants Simon Latch to write her a will. That’s pretty much his job description, since practicing law in Braxton, Virginia, for 18 years hasn’t given him much opportunity to spread his wings. But the case of Netty, as she insists he call her, is different. She’s an 85-year-old widow whose second husband, Harry Korsak, left her with something like $20 million in cash and securities. She has a pair of stepsons, Clyde and Jerry Korsak, she’s determined to disinherit. And she already has a will, a document Wally Thackerman drafted a few weeks ago that basically allowed him, as Simon soon discovers, to pillage her estate. So instead of following his usual procedure and asking his longtime secretary, Matilda Clark, to type out the will, Simon types it himself and has it witnessed without saying anything to her. Of course he’d never do what Wally Thackerman did, but given his poverty, his gambling addiction, and his estrangement from his wife, Paula, whose income is a lot more stable than his own, he wouldn’t mind drawing just a bit on Netty’s wealth. As it happens, his new client turns out to be more trouble than she’s worth, maybe even more trouble than she would’ve been worth to Wally. And when she ends up dying, her death is swiftly identified as murder, with every indication that Simon killed her himself. The whodunit is unremarkable, but Grisham handles the legal complexities of the case with professional finesse and adds a wonderfully poignant portrait of a nothingburger lawyer trying his best to keep things more or less legal.
Everything you’d expect from Grisham, and this time something more.Pub Date: Oct. 21, 2025
ISBN: 9780385548984
Page Count: 416
Publisher: Doubleday
Review Posted Online: July 4, 2025
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 1, 2025
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