THE SILENT CONVERSATION
on the outs at the time, and he may have been having an affair with the intern he later married. Delilah was fixated on promoting Daisy’s singing career despite her tender age. The couple’s son, Walker James, was packed off to Europe immediately after Daisy’s murder but is now back in Virginia running a successful software development company. As the sleuths work their way through interviews with everyone who’s still alive, several anomalies turn up that put them on a promising track. A charming cozy with plenty of suspects for the romantically inclined sleuths to winnow out.
Ramsay, Caro Severn House (256 pp.) $28.99 | Dec. 7, 2021 978-0-7278-9076-4
What seems like a quiet death at a high-end Scottish housing complex reverberates with echoes of two more well-publicized cases. A woman dressed as a police officer is found unconscious by an actual police officer in the beautifully landscaped gardens of Maltman Green, which requires a six-digit code to enter. Constable Martin Callaghan, who announces his discovery of the body of Rachel Sinclair, claims that he entered the enclosed green because he noticed another man following her. Although he and several others try CPR, Rachel dies from unknown causes. The inhabitants of the green, whose numbers don’t include Rachel, are a small but diverse bunch, ranging from the two owners and developers of the huge complex, formerly a brewery and jam factory, to a woman who’s afraid to leave her apartment. When DNA from 4-year-old Johnny Clearwater, who’s been missing for four years, is found on Rachel’s face, the episode blows up into a massive publicity nightmare even as it gives DCI Colin Anderson and DI Freddie Costello, of Police Scotland, a chance to take a break from their love-hate relationship and revisit both Johnny’s disappearance and the case of serial killer Eric Manson. They examine a number of related incidents that may provide the clues that lead to Johnny, dead or alive. With a complex storyline and protagonists to match, this procedural-plus keeps you guessing to the end.
PRIDE, PREJUDICE, AND PERIL
Oliver, Katie Berkley (320 pp.) $8.99 paper | Dec. 7, 2021 978-0-593337-61-5 Oliver links her passion for all things Jane Austen to a cozy whodunit. Despite her mother’s best attempts to set her up with a string of suitable men, Phaedra Brighton insists that she’s doing just fine. At 34, she’s a professor of English at Virginia’s fictional Somerset University who dons empirewaist dresses for her lectures on Austen; she’s perfectly content living alone with her cat, Wickham; and now, as she prepares to welcome Oxford-trained Shakespearean Mark Selden to Somerset, she’s serving as historical consultant on the sort-of-reality show Who Wants To Marry Mr. Darcy? The series, originally cast as Who Wants To Marry a Fortune? was renamed and redesigned when pharmaceutical magnate Harold Fortune, the lord of the Marling estate where the show is being filmed, died and left most of his estate not to the daughters who’d expected to star but to his nephew, William Collier. Charlene Lucas Collier, the old friend of Phaedra’s who’s just married Bill, insists that he’s kind and considerate, but he pitches a fit when he learns that his bride has loaned an antique jeweled choker to Tinsley Prentiss, the bachelorette cardiologist vying for the favors of Nick Ross, the heartthrob Welsh actor starring as Darcy. So there’s more shock than grief when Phaedra, soon after the choker is stolen, finds Bill dead in his clawfoot bathtub in Marling. There’ll be yet more violence, including an attempt on the life of Phaedra, who insists that “all she wanted was a good man,” once she refuses Detective Matteo Morelli’s demands to stop trying to clear Charlene by catching the murderer. Oliver bustles so nimbly among the assorted academics, relatives, and TV types that the killer sneaks in under the radar.
34
|
1 october 2021
|
fiction
|
kirkus.com
DARK NIGHT
Shelton, Paige Minotaur (288 pp.) $26.99 | Dec. 7, 2021 978-1-2507-9627-1 A traumatized woman slowly works through her personal issues while solving crimes in a remote Alaskan town. Famous novelist Elizabeth Fairchild fled to Benedict after a hazardous escape from her kidnapper, which left her with a large scar and white hair. Calling herself Beth Rivers, her birth name, she runs a small newspaper and has made many friends, but only Gril, the police chief, knows her real identity. Beth’s world is turned upside down by the sudden appearance of her mother, Mill, who’s wanted by the police for shooting, though not killing, her daughter’s kidnapper, Travis Walker. Beth gets more directly involved when wife-beater Ned Withers is found stabbed after yet another incident with his wife, Claudia. Ned’s been hiding his sister, Lucy, who’s also wanted by the police. Another wild card is Doug Vitner, supposedly a census man snooping around the area. Beth is both pleased and shocked by her mother’s visit. Mill’s been searching for years for both |
