An entertaining, witty, and well-plotted murder tale.
In this mystery series sequel, an American teenager in London deals with bombings, grudges, die-hard footballers, rock star has-beens, and more.
Izzy Brown, along with her mega-tall, slightly autistic, and less than enthusiastic sidekick, Elton Jones-Davies, is drawn into a cold case. Davy Taylor, an ex-rocker, was killed when his pub, the Red Lion, was blown sky-high back in 1989. In Izzy’s view, suspects are thick on the ground: Irishman Paddy Madigan, who had ties to the Irish Republican Army (Davy was a Protestant and rabid Unionist); Davy’s brother, Brian (the two had very public brawls); Harry Lane, a budding soccer superstar—and a Roman Catholic—in love back then with Davy’s daughter; rich developer Rupert Birdwhistle; and the list, as they say, goes on and on. Suspects are eliminated only to become suspects again. Motives are many; secrets abound. Izzy and Elton get in many tight spots, but she has a gift for the glib lie and the quick distraction. And she does a wicked Philip Marlowe (“I offered him my hand to shake like I’d just sold him a used car”). Along the way, readers find out how most of the suspects are related through blood or old friendships (or enmities). And that not just Davy’s son, but also his daughter work at Izzy and Elton’s posh school, St. Beckham’s, he a teacher and she a counselor. A tangled web indeed, one that Izzy hopes to slash through. Gibbs is a clever and engaging writer, and he has hit gold with gutsy Izzy and her partner, Elton. There is a strong tradition of teen sleuths, but Izzy is no Nancy Drew. Or perhaps she is a Nancy Drew for this less genteel and innocent age. In this well-crafted mystery, Izzy is a fully developed character, more than aware of her many flaws but determined to work on them despite setbacks. The story’s last line clearly promises a third volume in the series, and readers will look forward to it.
An entertaining, witty, and well-plotted murder tale.Pub Date: Nov. 15, 2022
ISBN: 979-8-9856757-1-9
Page Count: 300
Publisher: Borne Back Books
Review Posted Online: Nov. 1, 2022
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
A top-class cozy infused with dry wit and charming characters who draw you in and leave you wanting more, please.
Four residents of Coopers Chase, a British retirement village, compete with the police to solve a murder in this debut novel.
The Thursday Murder Club started out with a group of septuagenarians working on old murder cases culled from the files of club founder Elizabeth Best’s friend Penny Gray, a former police officer who's now comatose in the village's nursing home. Elizabeth used to have an unspecified job, possibly as a spy, that has left her with a large network of helpful sources. Joyce Meadowcroft is a former nurse who chronicles their deeds. Psychiatrist Ibrahim Arif and well-known political firebrand Ron Ritchie complete the group. They charm Police Constable Donna De Freitas, who, visiting to give a talk on safety at Coopers Chase, finds the residents sharp as tacks. Built with drug money on the grounds of a convent, Coopers Chase is a high-end development conceived by loathsome Ian Ventham and maintained by dangerous crook Tony Curran, who’s about to be fired and replaced with wary but willing Bogdan Jankowski. Ventham has big plans for the future—as soon as he’s removed the nuns' bodies from the cemetery. When Curran is murdered, DCI Chris Hudson gets the case, but Elizabeth uses her influence to get the ambitious De Freitas included, giving the Thursday Club a police source. What follows is a fascinating primer in detection as British TV personality Osman allows the members to use their diverse skills to solve a series of interconnected crimes.
A top-class cozy infused with dry wit and charming characters who draw you in and leave you wanting more, please.Pub Date: Sept. 22, 2020
ISBN: 978-1-98-488096-3
Page Count: 368
Publisher: Pamela Dorman/Viking
Review Posted Online: June 30, 2020
Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 15, 2020
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
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