A satisfying mystery filled with intriguing characters.
In Daigle’s thriller, a Laguna Beach police detective and a local reporter become involved in an investigation that changes the trajectories of their own lives.
Ray Stone, formerly of the LAPD (until he blew his cover during a major sting operation), is biding his time in California’s sleepy, artsy town of Laguna Beach. He misses the adrenaline-fueled high-octane police work of Los Angeles and is waiting for a chance to redeem himself. Early in the morning on New Year’s Day, 1969, a call comes in from dispatch: “Dead body at Shaw’s Cove.” The victim is Amelia Hart, a wealthy 50-something member of the artistic community and an anti-war activist. Her body is badly bruised. The officer on the scene says it is a suicide, but Ray suspects there is more to the story. Meanwhile, Dennis Driver, a reporter with the local Daily Pilot and a Vietnam War veteran, is battling depression and PTSD-like symptoms. On New Year’s Day, he checks the newspaper and sees that his story had been scrapped for one written by a more experienced reporter. When he dejectedly enters the newsroom, his editor hands him an opportunity for his big break: Report on the suspicious death of Amelia Hart. As Ray and Dennis, working separately but occasionally sharing information, begin digging into the secrets hidden behind the glossy facade of Amelia’s life, Daigle leads readers through the dark underbelly of the high-priced art world. The twisty, methodically paced narrative is as much a character study of two men struggling to overcome their inner demons and begin anew as it is an engaging mystery. A skillful wordsmith, Daigle mixes tight dialogue with long descriptive sentences, displaying a passion for similes that occasionally threaten to overwhelm the action: “…he watched the smoke twist and rise, a serpentine signal of the story he was about to unravel.”
A satisfying mystery filled with intriguing characters.Pub Date: June 15, 2024
ISBN: N/A
Page Count: 229
Publisher: Plan B Publishing Co
Review Posted Online: May 14, 2024
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
A fresh, funny, ambitious, and nuanced take on some of our oldest existential questions. Cannot wait for the TV series.
What would you do if you knew when you were going to die?
In the first page and a half of her latest page-turner, bestselling Australian author Moriarty introduces a large cast of fascinating characters, all seated on a flight to Sydney that’s delayed on the tarmac. There’s the “bespectacled hipster” with his arm in a cast; a very pregnant woman; a young mom with a screaming infant and a sweaty toddler; a bride and groom, still in their wedding clothes; a surly 6-year-old forced to miss a laser-tag party; a darling elderly couple; a chatty tourist pair; several others. No one even notices the woman who will later become a household name as the “Death Lady” until she hops up from her seat and begins to deliver predictions to each of them about the age they’ll be when they die and the cause of their deaths. Age 30, assault, for the hipster. Age 7, drowning, for the baby in arms. Age 43, workplace accident, for a 42-year-old civil engineer. Self-harm, age 28, for the lovely flight attendant, who is that day celebrating her 28th birthday. Over the next 126 chapters (some just a paragraph), you will get to know all these people, and their reactions to the news of their demise, very well. Best of all, you will get to know Cherry Lockwood, the Death Lady, and the life that brought her to this day. Is it true, as she repeatedly intones on the plane, that “fate won’t be fought”? Does this novel support the idea that clairvoyance is real? Does it find a means to logically dismiss the whole thing? Or is it some complex amalgam of these possibilities? Sorry, you won’t find that out here, and in fact not until you’ve turned all 500-plus pages. The story is a brilliant, charming, and invigorating illustration of its closing quote from Elisabeth Kübler-Ross (we’re not going to spill that either).
A fresh, funny, ambitious, and nuanced take on some of our oldest existential questions. Cannot wait for the TV series.Pub Date: Sept. 10, 2024
ISBN: 9780593798607
Page Count: 512
Publisher: Crown
Review Posted Online: June 15, 2024
Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 15, 2024
PERSPECTIVES
Expert, but unsurprising.
The death of an old friend who was more than a friend sends Dr. Kay Scarpetta down her latest rabbit hole.
If every body tells a story, the corpse of 7-year-old Luna Briley sings the blues. On top of the many signs of ongoing physical abuse, there’s the fatal gunshot wound to her head. Ryder and Piper Briley, the wealthy and powerful parents who didn’t call the police until after their daughter died, insist that Luna’s death was an accident, or maybe a suicide. Scarpetta doesn’t think so, and her refusal to release the body to the Brileys’ hand-picked mortician moves them to legal action against her as Virginia’s chief medical examiner. You’d think it would be a relief to put this case aside for another when Scarpetta’s niece, Secret Service agent Lucy Farinelli, calls her and ferries her by helicopter to an abandoned Oz theme park owned by Ryder Briley, but this one’s even more heartbreaking. Scarpetta is there to examine the body of astrophysicist Sal Giordano, her close friend and former lover, who was evidently kidnapped, held in captivity for several hours, and tossed out of an unidentified aircraft. The leading suspects are the Brileys; Carrie Grethen, Lucy’s sociopathic ex-lover, with whom Scarpetta has repeatedly tangled in the past; and the UFO that dumped Giordano’s body without leaving the usual traces for air-traffic technologies to pick up. The multiple rounds of physical examinations Scarpetta conducts on both victims are every bit as meticulous and gripping as fans would expect; the killer’s identity is neither surprising nor interesting, but Cornwell juggles her trademark forensics, and the paranormal hints she’s become increasingly invested in, more dexterously than usual.
Expert, but unsurprising.Pub Date: Oct. 8, 2024
ISBN: 9781538770382
Page Count: 400
Publisher: Grand Central Publishing
Review Posted Online: Aug. 29, 2024
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Oct. 1, 2024
BOOK TO SCREEN
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