A smart and fun detective story with a New Jersey accent.
As a former police chief tries to change her life, she’s pulled back into old paths as two dead bodies wash up in her seaside hometown.
It’s the summer of 1976, and in the fifth Mickey Cleary mystery, Mickey has things on her mind beside America’s Bicentennial. As she tries to become a New Jersey state trooper, a misogynistic fellow recruit aims to get her kicked out. As if that wasn’t enough, she and her husband are discovering that his time in Vietnam might have health consequences. Then two bodies wash up on the shore amid sand piled to make them look like snow angels. Meanwhile, a young man named Danny Casolaro works at a bar, and Maryalice Delaney, his friend and co-worker, is missing. His boss shares a rumor that she got married to some random guy and left town, but Danny knows that’s not like her. He’s worried because of a strange patron who came to the bar a few days ago. At the same time, a woman named Jacquie has been kidnapped but escapes into the Pine Barrens. There, she meets Sister Marian, a nun who previously went to Mickey for help. As Mickey is brought in on the case of the two dead bodies, she realizes she has a personal connection to the victims. This furthers her resolve to bring the suspect to justice, but as she delves deeper into the case, she learns an even more dangerous secret. Waters, a physician, gives a vivid picture of the setting, centered on the real-life town of Surf City on Long Beach Island. Mickey’s character shows development as well as maturity for the treacherous situations the plot brings her way. Other characters, such as Danny, Jacquie, and Marian, are shown to have their own personalities and dynamic qualities. This interesting cast of characters helps push the fast-paced plot forward, with surprising turns that enhance the mystery.
A smart and fun detective story with a New Jersey accent.Pub Date: April 24, 2022
ISBN: 978-1-73499-993-8
Page Count: 345
Publisher: ControlPrint Creative
Review Posted Online: March 23, 2024
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
BOOK REVIEW
Breezy, entertaining characters and a cheeky premise fall prey to too much explanation and an unlikely climax.
An aspiring mystery writer sets out to solve her great-aunt’s murder and inherit an estate.
Twenty-five-year-old Annie Adams has never met her great-aunt Frances, who prefers her small village to busy London. But when a mysterious letter arrives instructing Annie to come to Castle Knoll in Dorset to meet Frances and discuss her role as sole beneficiary of her great-aunt’s estate, Annie can’t resist. Unfortunately, she arrives to find Frances’ worst fears have come true: The elderly woman—who’s been haunted for decades by a fortuneteller’s prediction that this will happen—has been murdered, and her will dictates that she will leave her entire estate to Annie, but only if Annie solves her killing. It’s a cheeky if not exactly believable premise, especially since the local police don’t seem terribly opposed to it. Annie herself is an engaging presence, if a little too blind to the fact that she could be on the killer’s to-do list. Her roll call of suspects is pleasingly long, including but not limited to the local vicar, a one-time paramour of her great-aunt’s; a gardener who grows a lot more than flowers; shady developers and suspicious friends from Frances’ past; and Saxon, Annie’s crafty rival, who inherits the estate himself if he manages to solve the case first. Annie pieces together clues through readings of Frances’ journal, but the story eventually runs aground on the twin rocks of too much explanation and a flimsy climax. Cute dialogue gives way to lengthy exposition, and by the time Frances’ killer is revealed you may well be ready to leave Annie, Dorset, and Castle Knoll behind for the firmer ground of reality. Fans of cozy mysteries are likely to be more forgiving, but if you cast a skeptical eye toward amateur sleuths, this novel won’t change your mind about them.
Breezy, entertaining characters and a cheeky premise fall prey to too much explanation and an unlikely climax.Pub Date: March 26, 2024
ISBN: 9780593474013
Page Count: 368
Publisher: Dutton
Review Posted Online: Feb. 3, 2024
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 1, 2024
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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