DEATH ON THE ARGYLE
Canadeo, Anne Kensington (320 pp.) $26.00 | Aug. 30, 2022 978-1-4967-3241-5
A bunch of sleuthing knitters in smalltown Massachusetts become involved in a murder case involving a friend. Though it’s not the first time a member of the Black Sheep has been accused of murder, heavily pregnant Lucy Binger finds this threat both a welcome distraction and a provocation to seek the truth. The group often meets at the Happy Hands Café, owned by Rebecca Hurley, the college friend Lucy has been getting reacquainted with years after they lost touch. Their two stepdaughters have already become fast friends. Rebecca’s husband, Colin, seems an odd duck, but it’s still a shock when he’s killed by a falling bookcase. The police seize on Rebecca as the likeliest suspect. Lucy, who’s a whiz at internet searches, soon turns up some disturbing information on Colin, who’d planned to skip out on Rebecca using money in a hidden bitcoin account. The thriller he was writing is both derivative and boring, but it provides some clues to his demise, beginning with the strong resemblance of the protagonist, a nerdy superhero, to Colin himself. Lucy’s determination to follow up these clues in person dismays her friends and especially her veterinarian husband, who worries about her health as they await the birth of their new baby. Her friends, fearing that Rebecca will be arrested if they don’t come up with some more plausible suspects, pitch in to help. In the end, it’s Lucy’s dog who helps solve the complex case. A gal-pal mystery with plenty of twists and turns.
A GOOD DOG’S GUIDE TO MURDER
Davis, Krista Berkley (288 pp.) $8.99 paper | Sept. 6, 2022 978-0-593-43695-0
The Wagtail, Virginia, Dog and Cat Gingerbread House Contest, with its $10,000 prize, is interrupted by news of murders old and new. When Orly Biffle died, he left the town land for a new conference center as long as a majestic old oak tree was preserved. Now that the tree has started shedding limbs, it’s become a safety hazard, and Liesel Miller, Holly Miller’s grandmother and partner in the Sugar Maple Inn, has determined in her capacity asWagtail mayor to challenge the will and have the tree cut down. The situation gets worse when the tree trunk turns out to be filled with concrete that chews up the chainsaw blades attacking it, and worse still when police Sgt. Dave Quinlan and Holly’s sweetie, architect Holmes Richardson, realize that concrete isn’t the 34
|
1 july 2022
|
fiction
|
kirkus.com
|
only thing it’s filled with. The most likely donors of the remains immured inside the tree 20 years ago are lady’s man Boomer Jenkins, who disappeared just before his planned wedding; Penn Connor, a Sugar Maple guest who departed without checking out around the same time; and Jay Alcorn, whose mother, Althea, is now selling the family home long after she tried to talk him into dropping his unsuitable girlfriend Josie Biffle, Orly’s daughter. As if this weren’t excitement enough, 9-year-old Kitty Johnson disappears along with her grandmother, Jean Maybury, whose gingerbread house entry has won her a weeklong stay at the Sugar Maple. The winsome, forgettable mystery is interrupted periodically by advice from Trixie, Holly’s Jack Russell terrier, to her fellow canines who dream of turning detective, and it’s capped by nine recipes, three of them suitable for dogs (including one for cats). Since the murders involve poisoning, readers may want to think twice before trying those recipes.
MURDER BY THE BOOK Mysteries for Bibliophiles
Ed. by Edwards, Martin Poisoned Pen (304 pp.) $14.99 paper | Sept. 6, 2022 978-1-72826-115-7
Sixteen reprints from 1933 to 1973 showing golden age–inspired puzzle masters doing what they do best: bringing together readers, books, and felonies. Even more than in other entries in the British Library Crime Classics, the hallmarks here are urbane literacy and unfettered conceptual invention. There’s a pleasing variety in the ways books make it into the stories. G.D.H. and M. Cole, Nicholas Blake, Gladys Mitchell, and Marjorie Bremner present writers who become victims of homicide; the writers in the stories by Philip MacDonald, Michael Innes, Victor Canning, and Edmund Crispin take on a more active role. Thirty-seven books go missing in S.C. Roberts’ superior Sherlock-ian pastiche; a smaller number of books provide pivotal clues in the stories by E.C. Bentley, A.A. Milne, Roy Vickers, and Ngaio Marsh. John Creasey leaves London for a tale of family trauma set in India; Julian Symons shows detective Francis Quarles picking up on a dying message whose import will be shudderingly obvious to every red-blooded American reader; and Christianna Brand’s “Dear Mr. Editor…” turns an editor’s routine request to one Christianna Brand for a contribution to a new collection into a fiendishly twisty tale of plot and counterplot. Although the stories naturally vary in quality, they all pull their weight; editor Edwards, avoiding obvious contributions like G.K. Chesterton’s “The Blast of the Book,” mixes wellknown and more obscure authors and resurrects at least several unjustly forgotten titles along the way; and the best of them, by Roberts, Vickers, Innes, and especially Brand, are cause enough for joy even among bibliophobes. Perhaps the single best collection yet in this blue-chip series.
