Shades of Agatha Christie in a modern whodunit whose prime suspects keep getting killed off.
A restaurateur lands the catering job from hell.
Delilah O’Leary, who owns an upscale pizzeria in Geneva Bay, Wisconsin, lives in a lakefront mansion as caretaker to Butterball, the cat who owns the house, along with her Great-Aunt Biz, who’s bitter about losing her home over unpaid taxes. Though she's no reader herself, Delilah is catering Speakeasy Soirée, a 1920s-themed fundraiser to benefit the library. The first problem arises before she even arrives, when librarian Isabel Berney begs her to create a non-pizza pizza for a donor with severe allergies to wheat, cheese, and tomatoes. Arriving with her staff and food on the boat sent by hostess Pam Phillips to carry them across the lake, she learns the entertainment is singer Lola Capone—yes, that Capone family—the mother of Delilah’s dream man, pianist and detective Calvin Capone. Delilah runs into Edgar Clemmons, the outgoing Friends of the Library board chair, who makes several enigmatic statements, gives Delilah two books, and asks her to deliver them, along with an odd message, to her friend Sonya before he apparently falls down the steps and dies. Then Lola Capone discovers an animal hiding in the piano. It turns out to be Butterball, who Delilah fears had a paw in Clemmons’ death. Calvin Capone requests backup, but a nasty storm delays the officers’ arrival. So almost everyone leaves except for a few people who are trapped when a tree falls on the road. Delilah and her crew hope to solve the mystery of the not-so-accidental death before more official reinforcements arrive. The remaining guests have rocky relationships and secrets that lead to another death and a murder attempt before Capone and the wannabe sleuths solve the crimes.
Shades of Agatha Christie in a modern whodunit whose prime suspects keep getting killed off.Pub Date: Dec. 26, 2023
ISBN: 9781250792471
Page Count: 320
Publisher: St. Martin's
Review Posted Online: Oct. 7, 2023
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Nov. 1, 2023
The most richly accomplished of the brothers’ pairings to date—and given Connelly’s high standards, that’s saying a lot.
Harry Bosch and the Lincoln Lawyer team up to exonerate a woman who’s already served five years for killing her ex-husband.
The evidence against Lucinda Sanz was so overwhelming that she followed the advice of Frank Silver, the B-grade attorney who’d elbowed his way onto her defense, and pleaded no contest to manslaughter to avoid a life sentence for shooting Los Angeles County Sheriff’s Deputy Roberto Sanz in the back as he stalked out of her yard after their latest argument. But now that her son, Eric, is 13, old enough to get recruited by local gangs, she wants to be out of stir and at his side. So she writes to Mickey Haller, who asks his half-brother for help. After all his years working for the LAPD, Bosch is adamant about not working for a criminal defendant, even though Haller’s already taken him on as an associate so that he can get access to private health insurance and a UCLA medical trial for an experimental cancer treatment. But the habeas corpus hearing Haller’s aiming for isn’t, strictly speaking, a criminal defense proceeding, and even a cursory examination of the forensic evidence raises Bosch’s hackles. Bolstered by Bosch’s discoveries and a state-of-the-art digital reconstruction of the shooting, Haller heads to court to face Assistant Attorney General Hayden Morris, who has a few tricks up his own sleeve. The endlessly resourceful courtroom back-and-forth is furious in its intensity, although Haller eventually upstages Bosch, Morris, and everyone else in sight. What really stands out here, however, is that Connelly never lets you forget, from his title onward, the life-or-death issues behind every move in the game.
The most richly accomplished of the brothers’ pairings to date—and given Connelly’s high standards, that’s saying a lot.Pub Date: Nov. 7, 2023
ISBN: 9780316563765
Page Count: 400
Publisher: Little, Brown
Review Posted Online: Sept. 21, 2023
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Oct. 15, 2023
It's hard to read but hard to look away from.
When two women who share a birthday meet, a journalist becomes the subject of her own true-crime mystery.
On their 45th birthdays, Josie Fair and Alix Summer meet at a pub and discover they were born not only on the same day, but in the same hospital. Alix is a successful journalist, and Josie convinces Alix that her story is worth telling: Josie met her husband when she was 13 and he was 40. “I can see that maybe I was being used, that maybe I was even being groomed?” she confesses to Alix. “But that feeling of being powerful, right at the start, when I was still in control. I miss that sometimes. I really do. And what I’d like, more than anything, is to get it back.” From this premise Alix creates a Netflix series, Hi! I’m Your Birthday Twin! which investigates Josie’s life as she reconciles what happened to her as a teen and seeks a new path. With the story unfinished, the narrative unfolds in the present tense, with prose that jingles like song lyrics: “He turns to see if the girl is behind him, and sees her wishy-washy, wavy-wavy, in double vision through the glass windows of the hotel.” Alix is both intrigued and repulsed by Josie, but she initially gives her the benefit of the doubt. After all, Alix’s husband, Nathan, has a drinking problem, and Alix knows what it’s like to be reluctant to leave a bad situation. But Josie seems more interested in being part of Alix’s seemingly glamorous life than she is in fixing her own, and when three people end up dead and Alix’s life is turned upside down, the evidence points to Josie—and turns the TV series into a murder mystery. Transcripts from Alix’s interviews alternate with the narrative, offering increasingly varied perspectives on Josie’s story as told by her neighbors, friends, and family members. With so many versions of events, the ending shatters, leaving readers to decide whose is the truth.
It's hard to read but hard to look away from.Pub Date: Aug. 8, 2023
ISBN: 9781982179007
Page Count: 384
Publisher: Atria
Review Posted Online: May 24, 2023
Kirkus Reviews Issue: June 15, 2023
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