A compact and often compelling police procedural.
In Arnold’s murder mystery, detectives must dig deep into victims’ lives to identify a bloodthirsty killer.
When Madison Knight sets out on a drive to shake off her disturbing nightmares, she doesn’t expect to find a corpse brutally disposed of in a ditch—but predictability isn’t a cornerstone of her profession. As a detective with the StilesPolice Department, Knight has spent years solving crimes. This most recent one, however, is particularly shocking due to the killer’s violent treatment of the body—which was stabbed and stuffed into luggage—and because the deceased, Tara Jackson, was well loved in the community. The 21-year-old daughter of a wealthy, renowned neurosurgeon spent most of her time and money giving back to society. Everyone who knew her speaks of her with admiration, often going out of their way to make sure that investigators know that she wasn’t a stereotypical, spoiled rich kid: “She wanted to earn her own way. I’m talking hard work,” says one interviewee. But as Knight and her partner, Terry Grant, follow the few clues they have, they begin to wonder if Tara was living a double life. After another body is found, the detectives are certain they have a serial killer on their hands. Knight is effectively shown to be a dedicated, occasionally overzealous protagonist who puts her personal life—and sometimes even the rules of her job—aside when there’s a mystery to solve. The high stakes of her profession weigh on Knight, and Arnold makes her guilt, anxiety, and paranoia palpable. The protagonist often acts rashly and is overcritical of those around her, but she remains an intriguing character. The story is told largely in dialogue, and as such, the book often feels like a transcript of a TV crime show; like such programs, it generally moves quickly, but readers may wish for a few more plot twists or jaw-dropping moments. Still, this is a page-turner with a few shocks here and there—particularly in chapters told from the perspective of the unknown killer, whose gruesome thoughts are hard to stomach.
A compact and often compelling police procedural.Pub Date: May 10, 2023
ISBN: 9781989706978
Page Count: 386
Publisher: Hibbert & Stiles Publishing Inc.
Review Posted Online: June 5, 2023
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
Gloriously artificial, improbable, and ingenious. Fans of both versions of Horowitz will rejoice.
What begins as a decorous whodunit set in a gated community on the River Thames turns out to be another metafictional romp for mystery writer Anthony Horowitz and his frequent collaborator, ex-DI Daniel Hawthorne.
Everyone in Riverview Close hates Giles Kenworthy, an entitled hedge fund manager who bought Riverview Lodge from chess grandmaster Adam Strauss when the failure of Adam’s chess-themed TV show forced him and his wife, Teri, to downsize to The Stables at the opposite end of the development. So the surprise when Kenworthy’s wife, retired air hostess Lynda, returns home from an evening out with her French teacher, Jean-François, to find her husband’s dead body is mainly restricted to the manner of his death: He’s been shot through the throat with an arrow. Suspects include—and seem to be limited to—Richmond GP Dr. Tom Beresford and his wife, jewelry designer Gemma; widowed ex-nuns May Winslow and Phyllis Moore; and retired barrister Andrew Pennington, whose name is one of many nods to Agatha Christie. Detective Superintendent Tariq Khan, feeling outside his element, calls in Hawthorne and his old friend John Dudley as consultants, and eventually the case is marked as solved. Five years later, Horowitz, needing to plot and write a new novel on short notice, asks Hawthorne if he can supply enough information about the case to serve as its basis, launching another prickly collaboration in which Hawthorne conceals as much as he reveals. To say more, as usual with this ultrabrainy series, would spoil the string of surprises the real-life author has planted like so many explosive devices.
Gloriously artificial, improbable, and ingenious. Fans of both versions of Horowitz will rejoice.Pub Date: April 16, 2024
ISBN: 9780063305649
Page Count: 384
Publisher: Harper/HarperCollins
Review Posted Online: Jan. 20, 2024
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 15, 2024
Not the best of Connelly’s procedurals, but nobody else does them better than his second-best.
A snap of the yo-yo string yanks Harry Bosch out of retirement yet again.
Los Angeles Councilman Jake Pearlman has resurrected the LAPD’s Open-Unsolved Unit in order to reopen the case of his kid sister, Sarah, whose 1994 murder was instantly eclipsed in the press by the O.J. Simpson case when it broke a day later. Since not even a councilor can reconstitute a police unit for a single favored case, Det. Renée Ballard and her mostly volunteer (read: unpaid) crew are expected to reopen some other cold cases as well, giving Bosch a fresh opportunity to gather evidence against Finbar McShane, the crooked manager he’s convinced executed industrial contractor Stephen Gallagher, his wife, and their two children in 2013 and buried them in a single desert grave. The case has haunted Bosch more than any other he failed to close, and he’s fine to work the Pearlman homicide if it’ll give him another crack at McShane. As it turns out, the Pearlman case is considerably more interesting—partly because the break that leads the unit to a surprising new suspect turns out to be both fraught and misleading, partly because identifying the killer is only the beginning of Bosch’s problems. The windup of the Gallagher murders, a testament to sweating every detail and following every lead wherever it goes, is more heartfelt but less wily and dramatic. Fans of the aging detective who fear that he might be mellowing will be happy to hear that “putting him on a team did not make him a team player.”
Not the best of Connelly’s procedurals, but nobody else does them better than his second-best.Pub Date: Nov. 8, 2022
ISBN: 978-0-316-48565-4
Page Count: 400
Publisher: Little, Brown
Review Posted Online: Sept. 27, 2022
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Oct. 15, 2022
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