Though this new series from Staub (Blood Red, 2015, etc.) is being compared to Mary Higgins Clark, the story, for better or...
A young widow stumbles on a town filled with psychic energy that encourages her to investigate an accidental death that may have been a murder.
Following her husband Sam’s death after a long illness and the loss of her job as a teacher, Bella Jordan, out of money and options on where to live, is forced to make the trek from New York to Chicago to start a new life with her mother-in-law. That’s not what Bella wants, but she needs to have some way to take care of Max, her young son. Not very far along the way to Chicago, Bella and Max rescue a cat who seems determined to meet its end on the road. Unable to stop herself from trying to deliver the pet to its owner, Bella detours into the little town of Lily Dale. Though she finds the guesthouse the owner ran, she’s too late to meet Leona, who was recently found drowned in spite of her lifelong fear of water. The town’s residents press Bella into service to take Leona’s place, at least for the summer. After all, Lily Dale is a tourist destination, with folks coming from all over the country to enjoy the spirits. That’s the spirits of those who have died, not the ones that come in bottles, though after a few interactions with the kooky residents, Bella thinks it could be both. Even though she’s a skeptic, Bella has some small hope that being surrounded by the spirit world could put her in touch with Sam. Instead, it leads her into wondering whether Leona’s death was an accident or whether there’s something more afoot.
Though this new series from Staub (Blood Red, 2015, etc.) is being compared to Mary Higgins Clark, the story, for better or worse, is a good deal sweeter and gentler than Clark. No spirits were bruised in the writing of this tale.Pub Date: Oct. 26, 2015
ISBN: 978-1-62953-248-6
Page Count: 304
Publisher: Crooked Lane
Review Posted Online: Aug. 17, 2015
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 1, 2015
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
Proficient but eminently predictable. Amid all the time shifts and embedded backstories, the most surprising feature is how...
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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