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PRE-MEDITATED MURDER

Weber’s yoga-inspired series regulars (A Fatal Twist, 2017, etc.) hit the road in a passable installment light on yoga and...

On learning that her boyfriend is already married, a sleuthing yoga instructor tries to disentangle him from his wife, first living, then dead.

Kate Davidson lives every woman’s worst nightmare when her boyfriend, Michael Massey, ceremoniously presents her on her birthday with a jewelry box that she excitedly opens to find, well, something that’s not an engagement ring. Now that they’ve been living together—along with Kate’s German shepherd, Bella—Kate had assumed that she and Michael were on the same page, but her shocked reaction shows them both how wrong she is. As Kate spills her guts to her closest friend, Rene, over coffee the next day, Michael indicates that he’s never thought of marrying Kate because he’s technically still married. Although Michael wonders why something as minor as a wedding ring could mean so much to Kate, who’s suffering from shock and disbelief, he gamely asks his wife, Gabriella Massey, for a friendly divorce. After all, their marriage was mainly a citizenship arrangement for Gabriella. So Michael is surprised when Gabriella not only will not grant him the divorce, but also threatens to extort money from him. Feeling that things will go more smoothly in person, Michael makes plans to travel from Seattle to Cannon Beach, Oregon, to talk with Gabriella, bringing along Kate, Rene, Bella, and company. Problem is, Gabriella hasn’t changed her mind, and when Kate sees them together, she doesn’t believe that Michael has been forthcoming about the obvious spark between Gabriella and him. Before Michael can find out why Gabriella’s being so stubborn, she’s murdered, and the Cannon Beach police think Michael’s to blame. As Kate balances her desire to help Michael against her suspicions that he might have killed his estranged wife, her distrust in Michael is surpassed only by her desire that justice be served.

Weber’s yoga-inspired series regulars (A Fatal Twist, 2017, etc.) hit the road in a passable installment light on yoga and heavy on complex relationship dynamics.

Pub Date: Jan. 8, 2018

ISBN: 978-0-7387-5068-2

Page Count: 312

Publisher: Midnight Ink/Llewellyn

Review Posted Online: Oct. 16, 2017

Kirkus Reviews Issue: Nov. 1, 2017

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BADLANDS

A suspenseful, professional-grade north country procedural whose heroine, a deft mix of compassion and attitude, would be...

Box takes another break from his highly successful Joe Pickett series (Stone Cold, 2014, etc.) for a stand-alone about a police detective, a developmentally delayed boy, and a package everyone in North Dakota wants to grab.

Cassandra Dewell can’t leave Montana’s Lewis and Clark County fast enough for her new job as chief investigator for Jon Kirkbride, sheriff of Bakken County. She leaves behind no memories worth keeping: her husband is dead, her boss has made no bones about disliking her, and she’s looking forward to new responsibilities and the higher salary underwritten by North Dakota’s sudden oil boom. But Bakken County has its own issues. For one thing, it’s cold—a whole lot colder than the coldest weather Cassie’s ever imagined. For another, the job she turns out to have been hired for—leading an investigation her new boss doesn’t feel he can entrust to his own force—makes her queasy. The biggest problem, though, is one she doesn’t know about until it slaps her in the face. A fatal car accident that was anything but accidental has jarred loose a stash of methamphetamines and cash that’s become the center of a battle between the Sons of Freedom, Bakken County’s traditional drug sellers, and MS-13, the Salvadorian upstarts who are muscling in on their territory. It’s a setup that leaves scant room for law enforcement officers or for Kyle Westergaard, the 12-year-old paperboy damaged since birth by fetal alcohol syndrome, who’s walked away from the wreck with a prize all too many people would kill for.

A suspenseful, professional-grade north country procedural whose heroine, a deft mix of compassion and attitude, would be welcome to return and tie up the gaping loose end Box leaves. The unrelenting cold makes this the perfect beach read.

Pub Date: July 28, 2015

ISBN: 978-0-312-58321-7

Page Count: 272

Publisher: Minotaur

Review Posted Online: April 21, 2015

Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 15, 2015

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THE A LIST

Proficient but eminently predictable. Amid all the time shifts and embedded backstories, the most surprising feature is how...

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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

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