Heley’s seventh Abbot Agency entry may be her most delicate and best balanced yet.
An old friend talks Bea Abbot (False Money, 2011, etc.) into helping a musician caught in a honey trap.
Plagued by doubts about the direction her domestic agency is taking, Bea takes an afternoon off to attend a concert with CJ, her adopted son Oliver’s mentor. With his usual skill, CJ guides her to a tête-à-tête with Jeremy Waite, a music teacher fired because of an illicit liaison with an underage girl. The more she listens to Jeremy’s tale—how Josie knocked on his door looking for an address on the next street, how she returned day after day to pour out her lonely heart to him, how she maneuvered him into a compromising position, only to have a photographer snap their picture—the more certain she is that he’s the victim of a badger game. But his wife has thrown him out, and when vandals trash his rental flat, kind-hearted Bea lets Jeremy stay with her in an upstairs apartment originally intended for Oliver and Bea’s assistant Maggie to share. Jeremy is a mixed bag as a guest. He eats everything in sight, he can’t find his shoes, but he creates celestial music on an electric keyboard. And Bea can use the distraction. Her agency is growing by leaps and bounds, but as the client list grows, so do the complaints. Her new manager, Ianthe, has fired all her old staff and changes the computer password daily, effectively locking Bea out of her own system. But when Maggie’s purchase orders aren’t filled and her estimates keep getting lost, Bea wonders if it’s time to sell up and retire to the south, as her son Max repeatedly suggests.
Heley’s seventh Abbot Agency entry may be her most delicate and best balanced yet.Pub Date: March 1, 2012
ISBN: 978-0-7278-8117-5
Page Count: 224
Publisher: Severn House
Review Posted Online: March 4, 2012
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 15, 2012
Let’s hope Rowling’s next book is sharper and shorter.
J.K. Rowling returns with her fourth pseudonymous mystery, putting Cormoran Strike and his now–partner in detecting, Robin Ellacott, in the middle of a scheme involving blackmail, murder, and the House of Commons.
Fans have had to wait three years for the latest Galbraith (Career of Evil, 2015, etc.) novel, but the book picks up exactly where the last installment left off, with Strike arriving late to Robin’s wedding, just after she says “I do” to her odious fiance, Matthew. Strike had recently fired Robin from her job at his private detective agency, worried about her safety after a serial killer tried to make her his next victim, and Robin is more concerned with whether he’s going to hire her back than about making sure the wedding guests are enjoying themselves. Not-really-spoiler-alert: He is. Flash-forward a year, and the agency is prospering when a mentally ill man named Billy shows up with a half-coherent story about having witnessed something terrible when he was a child: “I seen a kid killed…strangled.” Soon after, Jasper Chiswell (pronounced “Chizzle,” in the obscure way of the English upper class), the Minister for Culture, hires Strike to find dirt on two people he says are blackmailing him: Geraint Winn, whose wife is another government minister, and Jimmy Knight, who, not coincidentally, is the brother of Billy, whose story Strike had been looking into. Robin goes undercover in Chiswell’s office, where we meet a variety of the minister’s colleagues, friends, and family members. Rowling keeps many balls up in the air—perhaps too many considering the dead body that gets the book off the ground doesn’t show up until Page 281. There are still another 366 pages to go, and much of that length is a slog. Robin, who can be a great character, spends way too much time wondering what to do about her personal life—for the fourth book in a row. The mystery itself is complex, which is good, verging on convoluted, which is not. There are pleasures to be had, as in Rowling’s jokes on her uber-posh characters: “ ‘Steady on, old chap,’ said [Chiswell’s son-in-law], something that Robin had never thought to hear outside a book.” But there’s way too much filler in between.
Let’s hope Rowling’s next book is sharper and shorter.Pub Date: Sept. 18, 2018
ISBN: 978-0-316-42273-4
Page Count: 650
Publisher: Little, Brown
Review Posted Online: Sept. 16, 2018
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Oct. 15, 2018
Gamache’s 10th outing (How the Light Gets In, 2013, etc.) culminates in one breathless encounter, and readers may feel they...
Armand Gamache, former chief inspector of homicide for the Sûreté du Québec, is settling into retirement in the idyllic village of Three Pines—but Gamache understands better than most that danger never strays far from home.
With the help of friends and chocolate croissants and the protection of the village’s massive pines, Gamache is healing. His hands don’t shake as they used to; you might just mistake him and his wife, Reine-Marie, for an ordinary middle-age couple oblivious to the world’s horrors. But Gamache still grapples with a “sin-sick soul”—he can’t forget what lurks just beyond his shelter of trees. It’s his good friend Clara Morrow who breaks his fragile state of peace when she asks for help: Peter, Clara’s husband, is missing. After a year of separation, Peter was scheduled to return home; Clara needs to know why he didn’t. This means going out there, where the truth awaits—but are Clara and Gamache ready for the darkness they might encounter? The usual cast of characters is here: observant bookseller Myrna; Gamache’s second in command, Jean-Guy Beauvoir; even the bitter old poet, Ruth, is willing to lend a hand to find Peter, an artist who’s lost his way. The search takes them across Quebec to the mouth of the St. Lawrence River, toward another sin-sick soul, one fighting to claw his way out of jealousy’s grasp. Penny develops the story behind Peter’s disappearance at a slow, masterful pace, revealing each layer of the mystery alongside an introspective glance at Gamache and his comrades, who can all sympathize with Peter’s search for purpose. The emotional depth accessed here is both a wonder and a joy to uncover; if only the different legs of Peter’s physical journey were connected as thoughtfully as his emotional one.
Gamache’s 10th outing (How the Light Gets In, 2013, etc.) culminates in one breathless encounter, and readers may feel they weren’t prepared for this story to end. The residents of Three Pines will be back, no doubt, as they’ll have new wounds to mend.Pub Date: Aug. 26, 2014
ISBN: 978-1-250-02206-6
Page Count: 384
Publisher: Minotaur
Review Posted Online: July 13, 2014
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 1, 2014
BOOK TO SCREEN
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