Apart from recurring characters, this entry is less interested in live people than in dead animals.
Dr. Temperance Brennan tackles the case of a serial killer of animals who’s been ascending the food chain over a period of years.
The unnerving vision that causes an elderly woman to drive off a rainy road in Mecklenburg County, North Carolina, turns out to be a painted head nailed to a tree. Even more disquieting than this discovery is Tempe’s realization that it’s only the latest of a series of heads similarly disfigured, decorated, and displayed as death’s heads. The only thing that prevents the perp, whoever it is, from being threatened with life imprisonment is that none of the remains are human: They’re all skulls of rats, squirrels, rabbits, skunks, and dogs, the earliest of them three years old. Tempe and Erskine “Skinny” Slidell, the surly retired police investigator who partners with her, suspect that the killer, whose latest display does contain some human bones, is working up to killing people, and they turn out to be all too correct. Just in case Tempe is looking for relief from this stressful case at home, her willful 17-year-old grandniece, Ruthie, has overcome her resistance to setting foot on the campus of UNC Charlotte and made contact with Lester Meloy, a grad student who’s supplied her with weed, and Danielle Hall, his fellow member in a secretive group called “Live.” Ruthie inevitably goes missing and Tempe is kidnapped herself before all the promising complications of the case are waved aside in favor of a solution that comes out of left field and answers almost none of the sharpest questions the mystery has raised.
Apart from recurring characters, this entry is less interested in live people than in dead animals.Pub Date: Nov. 18, 2025
ISBN: 9781668051474
Page Count: 288
Publisher: Scribner
Review Posted Online: Aug. 29, 2025
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Oct. 1, 2025
High art meets low life in a tale a lot more sympathetic to the latter.
Someone is stalking the streets of Lt. Eve Dallas’s New York, intent on bringing new life to sex workers by snuffing out their old ones.
In 2061, prostitutes are called licensed companions, and that’s Leesa Culver’s job description when she’s accosted by a plausible-looking artist who wants to hire her as a model for the night. Before the night is over, she’s been drugged, strangled, costumed, and posed as an uncanny replica of Vermeer’s Girl With a Pearl Earring. The shock of the crime is deepened by the murder the following night of licensed companion Bobby Ren, whose body is discovered at an art gallery entrance costumed and posed as Gainsborough’s Blue Boy. The killer clearly has an obsessive agenda, a rapid-fire timetable, and access to unlimited financial resources that have allowed him to commission expensive custom-made outfits for the victims. This last detail both marks his power and points to the way Dallas, her gazillionaire husband, Roarke, and her sidekick, Det. Delia Peabody, will track him down by methodically narrowing the field of consumers who’ve purchased the costly costumes. After identifying the guilty party two-thirds of the way through the story, they’ll still face an uphill battle convicting a killer with no conscience, no respect for the law, and a budget that would easily cover the means to jump bail, remove his ankle tracker, and hire a private jet to escape to a foreign land with no extradition treaty. Robb keeps it all consistently absorbing by sweating every procedural detail along with her heroine. Only Dallas’ climactic interrogation of her prisoner is a letdown, because it’s perfectly obvious how she’s going to wangle a confession out of him.
High art meets low life in a tale a lot more sympathetic to the latter.Pub Date: Sept. 2, 2025
ISBN: 9781250370822
Page Count: 368
Publisher: St. Martin's
Review Posted Online: May 16, 2025
Kirkus Reviews Issue: June 15, 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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