Charming, gritty explorations of the greatest mysteries of all: Who are we, and what is this life?
A collection of nine mini-mysteries loosely inspired by the childhood gateway stories about Encyclopedia Brown and Nancy Drew—but with existential depths.
Some of the stories are fashioned like traditional “5 Minute Mysteries,” in which the reader is asked to find the solution (which is conveniently included), but the solutions here have more to do with the weary weight of the world than a reader’s ability to decipher physical clues. The longest entry, “The Mystery of Killington Manor or the Feeling of Seeing Clear Blue Sky After Being Lost in the Woods,” offers a take on Agatha Christie and other writers of country house mysteries but, as with most of the pieces, is truly about the mystery of maturity, more about the challenge of remaining a good person when the world is spitting in your face than a true whodunit. Gran offers a feminist reading of female detectives, from the spun-sugar sweetness of Nancy Drew to seemingly fluffy old ladies like Miss Marple. The biggest standouts in the collection are the cases featuring Claire DeWitt, a character in Gran’s previous novels, and Cynthia Silverton, “the best teen detective in the world” (who may or may not be two sides of the same person). At the end of “One-Minute Mystery: The Case of the Razor’s Edge Between Life and Death,” Claire saves someone’s life, at which point the narrator breaks the fourth wall, commenting: “I trust that if you ever need to save my life, you’ll know what to say, and the right words will drip from your lips like a flower’s nectar to a hummingbird’s tongue.…Maybe the only reason we’re here is because we’ve already saved each other. Thank you.” In these mysteries, the stakes are existential: knowing one’s self, knowing how to save the people you can save, and knowing that life is worth living even in the midst of pain. Gran is both blowing up the mystery genre and tying herself to its mast—what an incredible light show.
Charming, gritty explorations of the greatest mysteries of all: Who are we, and what is this life?Pub Date: Feb. 10, 2025
ISBN: 9798990695504
Page Count: 280
Publisher: Dreamland Books
Review Posted Online: Nov. 9, 2024
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Dec. 15, 2024
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
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 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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