Each new entry in this series has been better than the last. Delany’s down-to-earth heroine wraps up this investigation with...
Sherlock Holmes is reinvented as a curious bookshop owner.
British-born Gemma Doyle and her wealthy great-uncle Arthur share a home on Cape Cod, where Gemma is the owner of the Sherlock Holmes Bookshop. Jayne Wilson, her best friend and sometime sidekick in crime solving, is a partner in Mrs. Hudson’s Tearoom. While walking her dog, Gemma spots a fire at Scarlet House, a historic dwelling built in 1648, and calls 911. Her good deed involves her in yet another murder (The Cat of the Baskervilles, 2018, etc.), much to the dismay of Detective Ryan Ashburton, whose on-again, off-again relationship with her is definitely on. After Gemma and Jayne agree to host an invitation-only auction at the tearoom to raise money for the expensive repairs needed to Scarlet House, all goes swimmingly until Kathy Lamb, chair of the Scarlet House board, is found strangled among the valuable items donated for the auction and kept in the storage room at the back of Mrs. Hudson's. The storeroom's outside door is unlocked, but the murder weapon, a pink rope strung with miniature teacups that was being used as decoration for the auction, suggests that the killer may well be among the bidders. Gemma channels her inner Sherlock by casually chatting with the suspects and examining the physical clues. Kathy was not totally welcome as the new chair. Many thought she was using the position to help her get over a nasty divorce and a contentious relationship with her ex’s wealthy wife, Elizabeth Dumont, whose first husband died under suspicious circumstances. Those casual chats turn up a lot of information about past and present animosities that eventually lead to another murder for the brainy Brit to solve.
Each new entry in this series has been better than the last. Delany’s down-to-earth heroine wraps up this investigation with even more than her customary panache.Pub Date: Nov. 13, 2018
ISBN: 978-1-68331-790-6
Page Count: 304
Publisher: Crooked Lane
Review Posted Online: Sept. 17, 2018
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Oct. 1, 2018
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
An unsettling, often scary account of how memory loss affects a strong woman’s life.
A coffeehouse manager awakens on a park bench minus much of her memory.
Clare Cosi wakes up stiff and cold in Washington Square Park. Though there are lots of things she doesn’t remember, she does know that she’ll be safe at the Village Blend coffeehouse, where she’s greeted with joy and told that she’s been missing for four days. When her ex-husband, Matteo Allegro, and his mother, Madame Blanche Allegro Dubois, the coffee shop's owner, arrive on the scene, they realize she’s forgotten the last 15 years of her life and thinks she’s living in New Jersey with her young daughter, Joy. Hospitalized, she fails to recognize both Joy, now a grown-up, and her current fiance, Detective Mike Quinn. Celebrity psychiatrist Dr. Dominic Lorca takes over Clare’s care and insists she be moved to an upstate facility. Despite pulling every string available, Mike can’t free her from Lorca even though she’s a witness in the case of missing heiress Annette Brewster. Clare, no shrinking violet, pretends to take her drugs but is dying for a cup of coffee. Madame Blanche, Matteo, and Tucker Burton, the Village Blend’s assistant manager, hatch a plan to bust Clare free and find a place where she can be relaxed and open to stimuli that will help revive her memory. But Clare is loath to go with Matteo, who cheated on her repeatedly, even though their current relationship is good. Talking with her friends evokes memories of her past detective work (Shot in the Dark, 2018, etc.), and she struggles to relive her most recent days, some of which she spent with Annette, who’d arranged a private tasting of wedding cakes in the hotel she owns. Clare, Mike, and Matteo end up hiding out in the Hamptons from the police and a killer who’s stalking her.
An unsettling, often scary account of how memory loss affects a strong woman’s life.Pub Date: Dec. 3, 2019
ISBN: 978-0-451-48887-9
Page Count: 368
Publisher: Berkley
Review Posted Online: Oct. 13, 2019
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Nov. 1, 2019
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
An engaging, well-researched, and sometimes thought-provoking art mystery.
A tale of two artists, living 78 years apart in a small Southern town, and the third artist who links them.
The fates of two white painters in Edenton, North Carolina, intertwine with the legacy of a third, that of Jesse Jameson Williams, a prominent African American artist with Edenton roots. In 2018, the recently deceased Jesse has left a very unusual will. In life, Jesse paid his success forward by helping underdog artists. Morgan Christopher, the last, posthumous recipient of Jesse’s largesse, can’t imagine why he chose her, a complete stranger who is doing time for an alcohol-related crash that left another driver paralyzed. Released on an early parole engineered by Jesse’s daughter, Lisa, Morgan will receive $50,000 to restore a mural painted by one Anna Dale in 1940 in time for a gallery opening on Aug. 5, 2018. If Morgan misses this deadline, not only is her deal off, but Lisa will, due to a puzzling, thinly motivated condition of Jesse’s will, lose her childhood home. In an alternating narrative, Anna, winner of a U.S. Treasury Department competition, has been sent from her native New Jersey to paint a mural for the Edenton post office. Anna has zero familiarity with the South, particularly with Jim Crow. She recognizes Jesse’s exceptional talent and mentors him, to the ire of Edenton’s white establishment. Martin Drapple, a local portraitist rejected in the competition, is at first a good sport, when he’s sober, until, somewhat too suddenly, he’s neither. Issues of addiction and mental illness are foremost in both past and present. Anna’s late mother had manic episodes. Morgan’s estranged parents are unrepentant boozers. And Anna’s mural of civic pride is decidedly strange. One of the strengths here is the creditable depiction of the painter’s process, in Anna’s case, and the restorer’s art, in Morgan’s. Despite the fraught circumstances challenging all three painters, conflict is lacking. The 1940 racial tensions are unrealistically mild, and Jesse’s testamentary testiness is not mined for its full stakes-raising potential.
An engaging, well-researched, and sometimes thought-provoking art mystery.Pub Date: Jan. 14, 2020
ISBN: 978-1-250-08733-1
Page Count: 400
Publisher: St. Martin's
Review Posted Online: Oct. 13, 2019
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Nov. 1, 2019
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
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