An unparalleled detective in a no-nonsense mystery bubbling with tension until the final page.
In this debut thriller, a detective already undercover at a Connecticut college works the case of a dead professor with no shortage of suspects.
Police aren’t sure whether Whitney University professor Godfrey Mitchell’s shooting death is a murder or suicide. Fortunately for lead detective Jackson Blaustein, his former partner Dina Barrett is in a unique position to aid in the investigation. Dina, sidelined after taking a bullet, is posing as a Whitney student, sharing surveillance duties at the library to ensnare a librarian drug dealer. She also befriends the professor’s teaching assistant, Kelly Richmond, while Dina’s landlady, Freddie Hathaway, provides a lead: someone possibly angry over Mitchell’s whistleblowing 20 years ago. But that’s merely the start of an endless list of people who wouldn’t mind seeing the professor dead. Rumor has it that Mitchell, author of an immensely popular series of academic books, had graduate students handle the bulk of the research without giving any of them credit in print. And his philandering ways seem to have been fairly common knowledge, including his affair with a babysitter. As Jackson and partner Huey Gardner interrogate suspects, Dina balances her drug dealer case with interviews she’s conducting alone. The discovery of another professor’s body, unmistakably murder, surprises everyone, but it likewise puts the shrewd Dina too close to a killer and maybe in the line of fire. Dunn gets down to business straightaway, opening her tale with Mitchell’s bloody corpse and cops at the scene. The narrative’s brimming with police questioning people; even when the dual investigations intersect (they separately learn of an irate student named Curt Daniels), it’s an engrossing, meticulous examination of evidence. The story banks on happenstance perhaps a few too many times: Dina acquires relevant information by following two women into a restroom and eavesdropping on their stall-to-stall conversation. Nevertheless, Dina’s enthusiasm is infectious; she’s curious without being reckless, even when she winds up in danger. Best of all, she’s coolly professional, never skimping on her original undercover gig (a stellar subplot on its own) and readily acknowledging her mistakes, though she’s simply too good to make more than one or two.
An unparalleled detective in a no-nonsense mystery bubbling with tension until the final page.Pub Date: May 16, 2016
ISBN: 978-1-4917-9504-0
Page Count: 320
Publisher: iUniverse
Review Posted Online: Aug. 19, 2016
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 15, 2016
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
A murder is committed in a stalled transcontinental train in the Balkans, and every passenger has a watertight alibi. But Hercule Poirot finds a way.
**Note: This classic Agatha Christie mystery was originally published in England as Murder on the Orient Express, but in the United States as Murder in the Calais Coach. Kirkus reviewed the book in 1934 under the original US title, but we changed the title in our database to the now recognizable title Murder on the Orient Express. This is the only name now known for the book. The reason the US publisher, Dodd Mead, did not use the UK title in 1934 was to avoid confusion with the 1932 Graham Greene novel, Orient Express.
Pub Date: Feb. 28, 1934
ISBN: 978-0062073495
Page Count: -
Publisher: Dodd, Mead
Review Posted Online: Sept. 20, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 1, 1934
The parts with Nero Wolfe, the only character Goldsborough brings to life, are almost worth waiting for.
In Archie Goodwin's 15th adventure since the death of his creator, Rex Stout, his gossipy Aunt Edna Wainwright lures him from 34th Street to his carefully unnamed hometown in Ohio to investigate the death of a well-hated bank president.
Tom Blankenship, the local police chief, thinks there’s no case since Logan Mulgrew shot himself. But Archie’s mother, Marjorie Goodwin, and Aunt Edna know lots of people with reason to have killed him. Mulgrew drove rival banker Charles Purcell out of business, forcing Purcell to get work as an auto mechanic, and foreclosed on dairy farmer Harold Mapes’ spread. Lester Newman is convinced that Mulgrew murdered his ailing wife, Lester’s sister, so that he could romance her nurse, Carrie Yeager. And Donna Newman, Lester’s granddaughter, might have had an eye on her great-uncle’s substantial estate. Nor is Archie limited to mulling over his relatives’ gossip, for Trumpet reporter Verna Kay Padgett, whose apartment window was shot out the night her column raised questions about the alleged suicide, is perfectly willing to publish a floridly actionable summary of the leading suspects that delights her editor, shocks Archie, and infuriates everyone else. The one person missing is Archie’s boss, Nero Wolfe (Death of an Art Collector, 2019, etc.), and fans will breathe a sigh of relief when he appears at Marjorie’s door, debriefs Archie, notices a telltale clue, prepares dinner for everyone, sleeps on his discovery, and arranges a meeting of all parties in Marjorie’s living room in which he names the killer.
The parts with Nero Wolfe, the only character Goldsborough brings to life, are almost worth waiting for.Pub Date: May 19, 2020
ISBN: 978-1-5040-5988-6
Page Count: 248
Publisher: Mysterious Press
Review Posted Online: March 1, 2020
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 15, 2020
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