Strong characterizations are the highlight of this mystery tale.
In Parent’s whodunit, a veteran detective investigates the life of an emotionally scarred man on trial.
Since Fall River, Massachusetts, resident Cassidy Branigan’s demise was ruled a suicide, her neighbor boyfriend, Jaden Sanders, has been in a fragile state. He’s on medication for depression, lives alone, and feels “like a loser who couldn’t stop losing.” An unseen neighbor has been harassing him with notes for slamming his door; the most recent one reads, “You’re the reason she’s gone.” Then he’s visited by three aggressive men early one morning, one of whom says, “There’s always consequences.” Sanders kills two of the intruders and stabs the third in what seems like a clear case of self-defense to DS Asante Royo, a 15-year veteran of the Fall River police. However, Heather Laughton, a prosecutor with political ambitions, is determined to bring Sanders to trial,and Royo starts to question whether “there’s more going on here than Sanders is letting on…or perhaps more than he knows.” He teams with energetic rookie Megan Costa; their pairing is “like Tigger and Eeyore,” but her enthusiasm makes her a promising mentee in a city where “too many cops were on the take, living large.” Over the course of this mystery, Parent deftly sketches his main characters, including the pitiable, tormented Sanders, with his tormented soul, and Royo, “a man of few means and fewer needs.” The author effectively shows the latter to be a good cop and a good man who understands that his job has “more shades of gray than a winter sky full of clouds.” He also shows how, for Laughton, a plea bargain in the Sanders case might be in the best interest of justice but “not in hers.” The solution to the mystery, however, is less compelling, and the fact that Sanders acts as if his girlfriend is still alive, eight months after her death, is initially confusing. However, the case has a swift denouement that’s freeze-frame ready if it should ever be adapted to the screen.
Strong characterizations are the highlight of this mystery tale.Pub Date: April 5, 2022
ISBN: N/A
Page Count: 276
Publisher: Red Adept Publishing
Review Posted Online: March 9, 2022
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
BOOK REVIEW
One of those rare triple-deckers that’s actually worth every page, every complication, every bead of sweat.
A routine break-in at the home of Sûreté homicide chief Armand Gamache leads slowly but surely to the revelation of a potentially calamitous threat to all Québec.
At first it seems as if nothing at all triggered the burglar alarm at Gamache’s home in Three Pines; it was literally a false alarm. It’s not till he receives a package containing his summer jacket that Gamache realizes someone really did get into his house, choosing to steal exactly this one item and return it with a cryptic note referring to “some malady…water” and “Angelica stems.” Having already refused to meet with Jeanne Caron, chief of staff to Marcus Lauzon, a powerful politician who’s already taken vengeance on Gamache and his family for not expunging his child’s criminal record, Gamache now agrees to meet with Charles Langlois, a marine biologist with ties to Caron who confesses to a leading role in stealing Gamache’s jacket. Their meeting ends inconclusively for Gamache, who’s convinced that Langlois is hiding something weighty, and all too conclusively for Langlois, who’s killed by a hit-and-run driver as he leaves. The news that Langlois had been investigating a water supply near the abbey of Saint-Gilbert-Entre-les-Loups sends Gamache scurrying off to the abbey, where the plot steadily thickens until he’s led to ask how “an old recipe for Chartreuse” can possibly be connected to “a terrorist plot to poison Québec’s drinking water.” That’s a great question, and answering it will take the second half of this story, which spins ever more intricate connections among leading players that become deeply unsettling.
One of those rare triple-deckers that’s actually worth every page, every complication, every bead of sweat.Pub Date: Oct. 29, 2024
ISBN: 9781250328137
Page Count: 432
Publisher: Minotaur
Review Posted Online: July 19, 2024
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 15, 2024
Expert, but unsurprising.
The death of an old friend who was more than a friend sends Dr. Kay Scarpetta down her latest rabbit hole.
If every body tells a story, the corpse of 7-year-old Luna Briley sings the blues. On top of the many signs of ongoing physical abuse, there’s the fatal gunshot wound to her head. Ryder and Piper Briley, the wealthy and powerful parents who didn’t call the police until after their daughter died, insist that Luna’s death was an accident, or maybe a suicide. Scarpetta doesn’t think so, and her refusal to release the body to the Brileys’ hand-picked mortician moves them to legal action against her as Virginia’s chief medical examiner. You’d think it would be a relief to put this case aside for another when Scarpetta’s niece, Secret Service agent Lucy Farinelli, calls her and ferries her by helicopter to an abandoned Oz theme park owned by Ryder Briley, but this one’s even more heartbreaking. Scarpetta is there to examine the body of astrophysicist Sal Giordano, her close friend and former lover, who was evidently kidnapped, held in captivity for several hours, and tossed out of an unidentified aircraft. The leading suspects are the Brileys; Carrie Grethen, Lucy’s sociopathic ex-lover, with whom Scarpetta has repeatedly tangled in the past; and the UFO that dumped Giordano’s body without leaving the usual traces for air-traffic technologies to pick up. The multiple rounds of physical examinations Scarpetta conducts on both victims are every bit as meticulous and gripping as fans would expect; the killer’s identity is neither surprising nor interesting, but Cornwell juggles her trademark forensics, and the paranormal hints she’s become increasingly invested in, more dexterously than usual.
Expert, but unsurprising.Pub Date: Oct. 8, 2024
ISBN: 9781538770382
Page Count: 400
Publisher: Grand Central Publishing
Review Posted Online: Aug. 29, 2024
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Oct. 1, 2024
BOOK TO SCREEN
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