Another atmospheric, beautifully written mystery in which Hambly continues to explore the repugnant practice of classifying...
A rewardingly complex tale of murder in families related by blood and stratified by color in 1839 New Orleans.
Benjamin January (Murder in July, 2017, etc.) is a Paris-trained physician and musician whose mother, Livia, was the mistress of a wealthy Creole man who'd purchased her as a slave and then freed her. His sister, Dominique, is the current mistress of Henri Viellard, a nephew of Veryl St-Chinian, an elderly Creole man with a large interest in many plantations who plans to marry a young Irish girl with a sordid past. January, who is dark-skinned, is asked to play at the wedding, to which many of his pale-complexioned relatives are invited. His sister Olympe, a voodooienne, warns him of danger at Cold Bayou, a remote, crumbling sugar plantation totally unsuited to housing wedding guests. Louisiana law requires every member of a family-owned property to agree on decisions. Because Veryl’s bride, Ellie, would inherit his large share of the estate, his family is doing everything possible to stop the marriage. First a voodoo charm is found in Ellie’s dress. Then the steamboat arrives without the priest but with Ellie’s thuggish uncle, Mick Trask, accompanied by several bully boys. Things get worse. In an attempt to break up a fight, January falls from a balcony and breaks an ankle. Valla, Ellie’s light-complexioned house slave, claims that Ellie’s father loaned money to the man who used to own Livia and was never repaid, which would make Livia and her entire family slaves. Unremitting heat and humidity blanket the plantation, portending a storm as the squabbling families wait for the priest. January is caring for a man hurt in a duel when word arrives that Valla has been murdered. In the dark she could have been mistaken for her mistress, but whichever woman was the target, January knows that a black person will be blamed. When Trask seizes upon January as the culprit, he’s shackled in a room as the plantation is flooded and must rely on others to gather clues and uncover the real killer.
Another atmospheric, beautifully written mystery in which Hambly continues to explore the repugnant practice of classifying people by the color of their skin.Pub Date: Sept. 1, 2018
ISBN: 978-0-7278-8798-6
Page Count: 256
Publisher: Severn House
Review Posted Online: July 30, 2018
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 15, 2018
Forget about solving all these crimes; the signal triumph here is (spoiler) the heroine’s survival.
Another sweltering month in Charlotte, another boatload of mysteries past and present for overworked, overstressed forensic anthropologist Temperance Brennan.
A week after the night she chases but fails to catch a mysterious trespasser outside her town house, some unknown party texts Tempe four images of a corpse that looks as if it’s been chewed by wild hogs, because it has been. Showboat Medical Examiner Margot Heavner makes it clear that, breaking with her department’s earlier practice (The Bone Collection, 2016, etc.), she has no intention of calling in Tempe as a consultant and promptly identifies the faceless body herself as that of a young Asian man. Nettled by several errors in Heavner’s analysis, and even more by her willingness to share the gory details at a press conference, Tempe launches her own investigation, which is not so much off the books as against the books. Heavner isn’t exactly mollified when Tempe, aided by retired police detective Skinny Slidell and a host of experts, puts a name to the dead man. But the hints of other crimes Tempe’s identification uncovers, particularly crimes against children, spur her on to redouble her efforts despite the new M.E.’s splenetic outbursts. Before he died, it seems, Felix Vodyanov was linked to a passenger ferry that sank in 1994, an even earlier U.S. government project to research biological agents that could control human behavior, the hinky spiritual retreat Sparkling Waters, the dark web site DeepUnder, and the disappearances of at least four schoolchildren, two of whom have also turned up dead. And why on earth was Vodyanov carrying Tempe’s own contact information? The mounting evidence of ever more and ever worse skulduggery will pull Tempe deeper and deeper down what even she sees as a rabbit hole before she confronts a ringleader implicated in “Drugs. Fraud. Breaking and entering. Arson. Kidnapping. How does attempted murder sound?”
Forget about solving all these crimes; the signal triumph here is (spoiler) the heroine’s survival.Pub Date: March 17, 2020
ISBN: 978-1-9821-3888-2
Page Count: 352
Publisher: Scribner
Review Posted Online: Dec. 22, 2019
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 15, 2020
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
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