Nantucket Penny

May 1, 2021

It's autumn on Nantucket, the tourists have gone, and the residents have the island to themselves to sell drugs, paint racist slogans on houses, shoot up the school, and run away from their marriages. At least, that's how it appears to police chief Henry Kennis, who left California for a quiet small-town police force. He brushes it off when he hears from Australia that five women resembling his fianc�e, mystery writer Jane Stiles, have been murdered, and a copy of one of Jane's novels was found near one of the bodies. Kennis brings in protection for Jane, and a friend saves Jane's life by shooting a man who tried to kill her. Darker things are happening on the island. People are disappearing, and pennies are found in the home of each disappeared victim. Because he's a transplant to the island, Henry doesn't connect these cases until it's almost too late. Then Jane is kidnapped, and Henry realizes that all of the disappeared went to high school together and are connected by several horrid events. Unable to trust his own police department, Henry recruits two unorthodox assistants to rescue the townspeople who are on trial for their lives. VERDICT Kennis is hard on himself in this follow-up to Nantucket Counterfeit. The mystery has a nail-biter of a climax that will appeal to most audiences, but its many story lines and large cast will be appreciated only by regular readers of the series.--Lesa Holstine, Evansville Vanderburgh P.L., IN

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May 1, 2021
A poetry-writing Nantucket police chief is nearly overwhelmed by multiple crimes. Henry Kennis eagerly awaits his nuptials to cozy-mystery writer Jane Stiles on lovely Nantucket. Despite the island's reputation as home to the rich and famous, the native population's interest in past and present insults, along with a healthy dose of xenophobia, has been troubling Henry. In addition, there are drug gangs and an email from Australia that suggests someone is murdering women who look a lot like Jane. One of Henry's own officers is a racist rogue cop whose generations-long ties to Nantucket have so far kept him from being fired. Several locals have gone missing, with only a telltale penny left behind when each of them disappears, but they could be off-island for purposes of their own. So they're low on Henry's to-do list compared to the problem of the California jailbreak of Roy Elkins, whom Henry had helped capture when he worked for the LAPD. Elkins is evidently bent on killing the loved ones of everyone connected to his arrest. Closer to home, a local kid who brings an AR-15 to school to kill Latinos is stopped by Mitchell Stone, a former Marine with a highly classified past, whose skills Henry much appreciates when he suddenly has a murder to contend with. Nantucket native Jane well remembers the mean girls and bullies from high school who may be driving a former classmate to kill. Are all Henry's problem cases connected to ancient slights? A cerebral yet action-packed procedural rooted in sharply observed social problems.

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June 14, 2021
Axelrod’s agreeable sixth outing for Nantucket police chief Henry Kennis (after 2018’s Nantucket Counterfeit) presents Henry with a number of threats on the Massachusetts resort island. Unbeknownst to Henry, two maladjusted young men, inspired by the Nuremberg trials of Nazi leaders after WWII, are planning to abduct, “judge,” and execute all the people they imagine tormented them in high school. If Henry is a bit slow to recognize the significance of the wave of disappearances related to this scheme, it may be because he has other matters to distract him. A crazy ex-cop has come to the island intent on murdering the police chief’s mystery novelist fiancée, and an entitled, bigoted rogue cop is trying to incite a racist massacre. These two subplots fizzle out, though Axelrod does a good job making the reader care about their outcomes. Once Henry, a levelheaded, empathetic, and decent lawman, figures out what’s behind the disappearances, the action builds to an exciting climax. Readers will look forward to Henry’s further adventures.

July 30, 2021
Nantucket Police Chief Henry Kennis is hoping for a quiet autumn so he can enjoy his upcoming wedding to Jane, a writer of cozy mysteries. First, though, he and his ex meet with school officials about a "concerning" piece of creative writing his son submitted, about the planned revenge of a high school misfit. Then, two of Jane's high school classmates go missing, perhaps with each other, there's a break in and some racist graffiti, followed by a shooting incident at the school. No pattern, just seemingly routine cases--until he receives two alerts: The first is from a New South Wales, Australia police chief noting a series of murders of women who look like Jane, the second from a Federal agent who helped him put away a dirty cop while in L.A., reporting that the former cop had escaped from prison and was killing people close to those who had brought him down. Patterns in disparate actions and revenge are the themes that carry this thriller from a series of vignettes involving many of the island's year-round residents to an exciting culmination of the intertwined plots.

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