by Tracy Kiely ‧ RELEASE DATE: May 8, 2017
It’s impossible to resist Kiely’s charming trio of husband, wife, and dog (Killer Cocktail, 2016, etc.). The manner is...
A modern-day Nick and Nora Charles take their skills in sleuthing and repartee to the New York theater district.
Together with their bull mastiff, Skippy, who’s at least 10 times larger than Asta, Nic and Nigel Martini make the trek from California to New York to see the opening of a play written by Nic’s college friend Peggy McGrath. Dinner with her other college friend, wealthy, lovely new mom Harper, would be delightful except for the presence of Harper’s obnoxious husband, Dan Trados, a name-dropping, social-climbing theater critic. Unhappy Harper would like a divorce, but since she ignored her father’s suggestion and didn’t make her bridegroom sign a prenup, Dan would walk away with a fortune. After the play, they all adjourn to the magnificent apartment of producer Fletcher Levin, who has a vast fortune, a rocky reputation, and a penchant for very young girls. Nic and Nigel meet the cast and crew, and Nic quickly picks up a lot of undercurrents and not a lot of love for Dan. When he’s duly found dead, the police, in the person of Nic’s partner from her days as an NYPD detective, suspect foul play. Since Harper is naturally high on the suspect list, Nic, Nigel, and Skippy start sleuthing. A surfeit of suspects makes the task daunting, but Nic’s taste in fiction helps her solve the crime.
It’s impossible to resist Kiely’s charming trio of husband, wife, and dog (Killer Cocktail, 2016, etc.). The manner is effervescent and amusing, and the mystery surprisingly good.Pub Date: May 8, 2017
ISBN: 978-0-7387-4524-4
Page Count: 240
Publisher: Midnight Ink/Llewellyn
Review Posted Online: Feb. 20, 2017
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 1, 2017
Share your opinion of this book
More by Tracy Kiely
BOOK REVIEW
by Tracy Kiely
BOOK REVIEW
by Tracy Kiely
BOOK REVIEW
by Tracy Kiely
by J.A. Jance ‧ RELEASE DATE: April 2, 2019
Proficient but eminently predictable. Amid all the time shifts and embedded backstories, the most surprising feature is how...
Awards & Accolades
Likes
29
Our Verdict
GET IT
New York Times Bestseller
A convicted killer’s list of five people he wants dead runs the gamut from the wife he’s already had murdered to franchise heroine Ali Reynolds.
Back in the day, women came from all over to consult Santa Clarita fertility specialist Dr. Edward Gilchrist. Many of them left his care happily pregnant, never dreaming that the father of the babies they carried was none other than the physician himself, who donated his own sperm rather than that of the handsome, athletic, disease-free men pictured in his scrapbook. When Alexandra Munsey’s son, Evan, is laid low by the kidney disease he’s inherited from his biological father and she returns to Gilchrist in search of the donor’s medical records, the roof begins to fall in on him. By the time it’s done falling, he’s serving a life sentence in Folsom Prison for commissioning the death of his wife, Dawn, the former nurse and sometime egg donor who’d turned on him. With nothing left to lose, Gilchrist tattoos himself with the initials of five people he blames for his fall: Dawn; Leo Manuel Aurelio, the hit man he’d hired to dispose of her; Kaitlyn Todd, the nurse/receptionist who took Dawn’s place; Alex Munsey, whose search for records upset his apple cart; and Ali Reynolds, the TV reporter who’d helped put Alex in touch with the dozen other women who formed the Progeny Project because their children looked just like hers. No matter that Ali’s been out of both California and the news business for years; Gilchrist and his enablers know that revenge can’t possibly be served too cold. Wonder how far down that list they’ll get before Ali, aided once more by Frigg, the methodical but loose-cannon AI first introduced in Duel to the Death (2018), turns on them?
Proficient but eminently predictable. Amid all the time shifts and embedded backstories, the most surprising feature is how little the boundary-challenged AI, who gets into the case more or less inadvertently, differs from your standard human sidekick with issues.Pub Date: April 2, 2019
ISBN: 978-1-5011-5101-9
Page Count: 352
Publisher: Gallery Books/Simon & Schuster
Review Posted Online: Feb. 18, 2019
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 1, 2019
Share your opinion of this book
More by J.A. Jance
BOOK REVIEW
by J.A. Jance
BOOK REVIEW
by J.A. Jance
BOOK REVIEW
by J.A. Jance
by Patricia Cornwell ‧ RELEASE DATE: Oct. 23, 2007
Proceed at your own risk.
Pioneering pathologist Kay Scarpetta (Trace, 2004, etc.) goes up against a wraithlike killer whose self-appointed mission is to “relieve others of their suffering.”
Practice, practice, practice. If only 16-year-old South Carolina tennis phenom Drew Martin had stuck to the court instead of going off to Rome to party, her tortured corpse wouldn’t be baffling the Italian authorities, headed inexplicably by medico legale Capt. Ottorino Poma, and the International Investigative Response team, which includes both Scarpetta and her lover, forensic psychologist Benton Wesley. But the young woman’s murder and the gruesome forensic riddles it poses are something of a sideshow to the main event: the obligatory maundering of the continuing cast. Wesley still won’t leave Boston for the woman he tepidly insists he loves. Scarpetta’s niece, computer whiz Lucy Farinelli, continues to be jealously protective of her aunt. Scarpetta’s investigator, Pete Marino, is so besotted by the trailer-trash pickup who’s pushing his buttons that he does some terrible things. And Scarpetta herself is threatened by every misfit in the known universe, from a disgruntled mortician to oracular TV shrink Marilyn Self. Cornwell’s trademark forensics have long since been matched by Karin Slaughter and CSI. What’s most distinctive about this venerable franchise is the kitchen-sink plotting; the soap-opera melodrama that prevents any given volume from coming to a satisfying end; and the emphasis on titanic battles between Scarpetta and a series of Antichrists.
Proceed at your own risk.Pub Date: Oct. 23, 2007
ISBN: 978-0-399-15393-8
Page Count: 416
Publisher: Putnam
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 1, 2007
Share your opinion of this book
More About This Book
BOOK TO SCREEN
© Copyright 2024 Kirkus Media LLC. All Rights Reserved.
Hey there, book lover.
We’re glad you found a book that interests you!
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.
Don’t fret. We’ll find you.