A grim page-turner filled with family secrets and violent histories.
A star detective’s wedding is interrupted by a gruesome murder in Regan’s crime thriller, the 11th in a series.
Some cases are especially hard on police detective Josie Quinn, and this is one of them. It’s bad enough discovering the body of a murdered little girl on the steps of the church in which Josie is about to get married to her beloved Lt. Noah Fraley. It’s even worse when Josie realizes she has met the victim before—she’s 12-year-old Holly Mitchell, immediately recognizable due to her distinctive white eyelashes (caused by poliosis). Josie encountered Holly three months earlier, when Holly’s mother Lorelei helped Josie put down an injured deer. Holly was not meant to be at the wedding, and her presence on the property is made even more mysterious by the way her body is laid out on the ground, dressed in her pajamas, her fanned-out hair adorned with wildflowers. Creepier still is the pinecone doll clutched in the dead girl’s hand. (“Had it not been found on the body of a dead girl, it might be comical. Instead, it only roiled the acid in Josie’s stomach.”) Josie immediately puts the wedding on hold to find Lorelei and give her the news…only to discover Lorelei, too, has been killed, shot to death in her own kitchen. Luckily, Josie locates Lorelei’s younger daughter Emily hiding in a secret compartment in the girls’ bedroom. Among the other strange evidence found in the house—including burned-up photographs in the greenhouse and the armory of guns and knives hidden in a box beneath one of the mattresses—the police discover a second pinecone doll. Emily is no use as a source of information; just as she was taught to hide, she was taught to keep her family’s secrets. Josie and Noah are committed to bringing Lorelei and Holly’s killer to justice, but the already strange case only grows stranger the deeper they get.
Regan’s crisp prose propels a swift-moving plot, which leans into the tried-and-true tropes of the genre. Here, Josie considers Lorelei’s remote property, which abuts the old farmstead-turned-resort where she planned to have her wedding: “[T]he house was still miles from the main buildings on the resort. There was no chance of anyone accidentally pulling into her driveway, as even that was well hidden. This was a well-loved sanctuary that had been turned into a small pocket of hell.” This book is the 11th in a series, and the beginning of the narrative is slightly bogged down by 10 books’ worth of convoluted relationships (there have been stolen babies, false parents, first marriages, orphaned children, and DNA tests) that need to be explained in the context of Josie’s pending nuptials. Even the backstory of how Josie knows Holly is complicated, requiring the reader to suffer through a contrived prologue. Once things get moving, however, the story progresses quickly, and the central mystery is twisty, perverse, and thoroughly compelling. New fans may not want to start with this volume, but those who love the series will undoubtedly enjoy this unsettling installment.
A grim page-turner filled with family secrets and violent histories.Pub Date: April 12, 2021
ISBN: 9781800191389
Page Count: 286
Publisher: Bookouture
Review Posted Online: Feb. 15, 2025
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
A fresh and clever whodunit with an engaging twist.
A 16-year-old savant uses his Groundhog Day gift to solve his grandfather’s murder.
Nishizawa’s compulsively readable puzzle opens with the discovery of the victim, patriarch Reijiro Fuchigami, sprawled on a futon in the attic of his elegant mansion, where his family has gathered for a consequential announcement about his estate. The weapon seems to be a copper vase lying nearby. Given this setup, the novel might have proceeded as a traditional whodunit but for two delightful features. The first is the ebullient narration of Fuchigami’s youngest grandson, Hisataro, thrust into the role of an investigator with more dedication than finesse. The second is Nishizawa’s clever premise: The 16-year-old Hisataro has lived ever since birth with a condition that occasionally has him falling into a time loop that he calls "the Trap," replaying the same 24 hours of his life exactly nine times before moving on. And, of course, the murder takes place on the first day of one of these loops. Can he solve the murder before the cycle is played out? His initial strategies—never leaving his grandfather’s side, focusing on specific suspects, hiding in order to observe them all—fall frustratingly short. Hisataro’s comical anxiety rises with every failed attempt to identify the culprit. It’s only when he steps back and examines all the evidence that he discovers the solution. First published in 1995, this is the first of Nishizawa’s novels to be translated into English. As for Hisataro, he ultimately concludes that his condition is not a burden but a gift: “Time’s spiral never ends.”
A fresh and clever whodunit with an engaging twist.Pub Date: July 29, 2025
ISBN: 9781805335436
Page Count: 288
Publisher: Pushkin Vertigo
Review Posted Online: July 4, 2025
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 1, 2025
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
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