No one has ever matched Gardner for swift, sure exposition, and this vintage case shows America’s lawyer taking on a...
Long before television’s Perry Mason defended Paul Drake on a murder charge, his novelistic forbear took on an even more unexpected client in this 1942 case.
In the 10 years since banker Franklin B. Shore disappeared, his niece, Helen Kendal, has often wished that her Aunt Matilda, the wife Franklin abandoned, would have him declared legally dead so that his will could be probated and the $20,000 he’d promised to leave Helen, who’d like to marry Army Pvt. Jerry Templar instead of George Alber, the mate her aunt has chosen for her, could be paid out. But Matilda has always insisted that her husband was still alive, and now it looks as if she may have been right. A telephone caller claiming to be Franklin asks Helen to set up a meeting with Perry Mason through one Henry Leech at the run-down Castle Gate Hotel. When Mason, Helen, and Franklin’s brother, attorney Gerald Shore, arrive at the rendezvous, however, there’s no sign of Franklin—just a dead body sitting in a car, someone who’s presumably Henry Leech. Things are no better back home, where first Amber Eyes, the family kitten, then Matilda Shore have been poisoned with strychnine. Though both of them survive, Lt. Tragg, a feisty adversary who debuted only two years earlier, demands answers from Mason. When Tragg finds Amber Eyes in the apartment of Della Street, Mason’s faithful secretary, he arrests Della, and Mason’s longtime nemesis, D.A. Hamilton Burger, convinced that Della has also hidden away Franklin Shore, puts her on trial, not for murder, but for concealing a material witness. Luckily, her lawyer is the best in the business.
No one has ever matched Gardner for swift, sure exposition, and this vintage case shows America’s lawyer taking on a delightfully unexpected role. There's strong supporting work by the eponymous kitten, to boot.Pub Date: March 5, 2019
ISBN: 978-1-61316-115-9
Page Count: 264
Publisher: Penzler Publishers
Review Posted Online: Nov. 25, 2018
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Dec. 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
© Copyright 2025 Kirkus Media LLC. All Rights Reserved.
Follow
Popular in this Genre
We can’t wait for you to join Kirkus!
It’s free and takes less than 10 seconds!
Already have an account? Log in.
OR
Sign in with GoogleTrouble signing in? Retrieve credentials.
Welcome Back!
OR
Sign in with GoogleTrouble signing in? Retrieve credentials.
