This second mystery solidifies the lineup of our heroine's allies and nemeses while leaving matters intriguingly open-ended...
A new adventure for Charlotte Holmes—the Victorian lady detective who poses as a man named Sherlock—brings old mysteries to light and buried passions to the fore.
Picking up a few hours after the events of Thomas' A Study in Scarlet Women(2016), the novel starts with the misleadingly sweet-faced, golden-locked Charlotte being hired—through intermediaries—to track down a married client’s missing ex-lover. The assignment poses a conflict of interest because of its connection to Charlotte's dear friend Lord Ingram, and it soon appears to concern Charlotte's family as well. Not only is there a mystery man who keeps seeking out her sister Olivia, but other players from the previous case seem to still be involved in a high-stakes game. As if this weren’t enough, Charlotte is being wooed in unorthodox fashion by Ingram's brother, who's also a higher up in the British secret service. Coded messages are the theme of this episode, but the necessary technical explanations of ciphers and secret communication could lead a reader to skim. As a result, the mystery feels convoluted and might need a second reading to be fully understood. Fortunately, descriptions of the sleuth’s self-defense lessons and devoted pastry consumption provide a lively counterweight. There’s also an inevitable repetitive quality to passages that display “Sherlock’s” powers of observation and deduction through a charade she and her team enact for new clients. More deliciously unpredictable is Charlotte’s continuing association with Ingram; their unconsummated desire is held in check only by her lack of romantic inclinations and dispassionate knowledge of her own flaws—and his mistakes. Several subplots serve to underline this motif that men may love women and yet harm them through arrogance or self-interest.
This second mystery solidifies the lineup of our heroine's allies and nemeses while leaving matters intriguingly open-ended on the personal front. Readers of Victorian fiction, romance, and detective stories will each find something to draw them in.Pub Date: Sept. 5, 2017
ISBN: 978-0-425-28141-3
Page Count: 336
Publisher: Berkley
Review Posted Online: Sept. 3, 2017
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 15, 2017
PERSPECTIVES
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
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