As usual, the mystery plays second fiddle in an over-the-top tale laced with sarcasm and malapropisms.
More murder among the Amish and Mennonites, who live in what must be among the most homicide-prone communities in America.
Magdalena Yoder-Rosen, a Conservative Mennonite woman with a poor body image, a weird sense of humor, and a knack for solving murders (Tea With Jam and Dread, 2016, etc.), has been arrested for the murder of Sarah Conway, one of her guests at the PennDutch Inn, where she charges city slickers big bucks to muck out stalls, clean bathrooms, and eat yummy but heart-clogging Amish cuisine. Sarah was the assistant to Gordon Gaiters, editor of the wildly popular Woman’s Place magazine, and Mags, always hoping to garner favorable publicity for the inn, had agreed to bar all other guests during their visit—so there are very few other suspects when Sarah winds up dead. Mags’ husband, Gabe, aka the Babester, is a retired heart surgeon who struggles to keep the peace between his wife and his mother, a floridly stereotyped Jewish mama who’s launched a convent for depressed women. Mags, who uses her wealth to help many in the little southwest Pennsylvania town of Hernia, had already agreed to help Hortense Hemphopple—the neighbor whose mother, Wanda, is in prison for trying to kill Mags and her daughter Alison—reopen The Sausage Barn restaurant so that Hortense can pay her college tuition bill. Mags’ surprisingly successful fusion of Chinese and Amish cooking is complemented by the skills of Barbara Hostetler, whose desserts are to die for. And Sarah very possibly did die from eating one of the desserts brought from the restaurant to the inn. Luckily, Mags is a friend or relative to just about everyone in Hernia, and the judge, an old school pal, lets her out with a $1 bail, giving her plenty of time to track down the real killer with a little help from her friends and a goat.
As usual, the mystery plays second fiddle in an over-the-top tale laced with sarcasm and malapropisms.Pub Date: Dec. 3, 2019
ISBN: 978-0-7278-8915-7
Page Count: 208
Publisher: Severn House
Review Posted Online: Sept. 14, 2019
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Oct. 1, 2019
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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