Not a great mystery, but great fun as long as you avoid that Zesty-Paste.
A questionable client determined to prevent her uncle’s poisoning provokes another ebullient dash down Memory Lane with Los Angeles private eyes Bertha Cool and Donald Lam.
The case, first published in 1947 under the pseudonym A.A. Fair, begins as Beatrice Ballwin tells the partners she’s convinced that her uncle, hard-driving real estate developer Gerald Ballwin, is at serious risk for being poisoned, presumably by his socialite second wife, Daphne. She forks over a generous retainer Donald sniffs at after she leaves because he doesn’t think she’s really Beatrice Ballwin at all. Inspired by his customary inventiveness, he calls on Daphne himself and promises her lavish exposure to a wave of publicity among the younger set (hint, hint) if she’ll only endorse Zesty-Paste anchovy paste, of which he provides her a hearty supply. Donald figures that Daphne’s appetite for exposure will put any plans for murder she has on hold. This perfect strategy backfires when both Gerald and Daphne are fed arsenic in their servings of Zesty-Paste. Sgt. Frank Sellers, of LAPD Homicide, thinks the most likely suspects are Carl Keetley, the brother of Gerald’s late first wife, a gambler and sometime real estate salesman; the false Beatrice Ballwin, who’s actually Daphne’s secretary, Carlotta Hanford; and Donald himself. Undismayed, Donald ropes Gerald’s dentist, Dr. George L. Quay, and his nurse, Ruth Otis, into the suspect pool and, just when things look darkest, assures Sellers, “Work with me two hours and we’ll have this case solved.” Well, sort of, since, in Gardner’s inimitably brash manner, justice is not so much served as given the finger.
Not a great mystery, but great fun as long as you avoid that Zesty-Paste.Pub Date: Feb. 7, 2023
ISBN: 9781803360126
Page Count: 272
Publisher: Hard Case Crime
Review Posted Online: Nov. 15, 2022
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Dec. 1, 2022
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
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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