The prodigal son

Enhanced descriptions from Syndetics:

Potent poisons and deadly rivalries in this glamorous thriller.

Jim and Millie Hunter have it all: good looks, brilliant minds, and a meteoric rise to fame.

Dr Jim Hunter is a genius biochemist, and author of a smash-hit science book that is propelling him to the top. His wife Millie, is a blonde bombshell and fellow scientist, researching rare poisons derived from puffer fish.

They seem to have it all, but others in their academic circle have got the knives out, jealous of their success - and their inter-racial relationship arouses prejudice.

So when a double murder is perpetrated, using poison stolen from Millie's research lab, Captain Carmine Delmonico of Holloman Police must race to find the killer before they can claim their next victim.

The pool of suspects is small, but nobody is talking.

Have two men died to safeguard the publication of Jim's book - or do rivalries and betrayals run deeper than that?

Reviews provided by Syndetics

Library Journal Review

A toxin stolen from the university's lab spells murder for fellow scientists. Capt. Delmonico's team knows that brilliant professors can take diabolical actions. The fourth case for the Connecticut-set police procedural series (after Naked Cruelty). (c) Copyright 2012. Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.

Publishers Weekly Review

In the prologue of McCullough's disappointing fourth novel featuring Capt. Carmine Delmonico of the Holloman, Conn., police department (after 2010's Naked Cruelty), John Hall, a long-lost heir recently arrived from Oregon, dies from a lethal injection of a stolen toxin at a black-tie family party held on the evening of January 3, 1969. Delmonico, who investigates Hall's murder and two other grisly poisoning deaths, has a personal interest in the crime-his medical examiner cousin's daughter was the keeper of the pilfered poison. Suspects include relatives who were slated to lose large amounts of money from Hall's reappearance as well as ambitious faculty members from the town's Chubb University. A far-fetched premise, lengthy passages of exposition, unconvincing characters and dialogue, and a lack of attention to accurate period detail will cause the reader to lose interest well before the end. Agent: Michael Carlisle, Inkwell Management. (Nov.) (c) Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved.

Booklist Review

In the fourth entry in McCullough's Carmen Delmonico series, set in the 1960s university town of Holloman, Connecticut, a deadly toxin extracted from blowfish is stolen from the lab of biochemist Millie Hunter. Then John Hall, long-lost son of university-press printer Max Turnbull and an old friend of Millie and her biochemist husband, Jim Hunter, is poisoned at a small dinner party. A day later, new university head scholar Thomas Tinkerman, a religious zealot who opposes the publication of Jim Hunter's potentially best-selling book, joins the victim list. Two more murders follow, and while police captain Delmonico and his detectives suspect Jim a black man renowned in his field who has struggled with his interracial marriage to Millie, his soul mate since they met at the age of 15 there is not enough evidence to charge him. In her enthusiastic style (studded with exclamation points!), McCullough delves into small-town intrigue with well-defined characters and vivid descriptions, from food to fashion. Short on suspense but entertaining nonetheless.--Leber, Michele Copyright 2010 Booklist

Kirkus Book Review

Connecticut detective Carmine Delmonico (Naked Cruelty, 2010, etc.) is flummoxed by a string of murders that just might involve his biochemist cousin. While her prospective Nobel laureate husband Jim's been penning A Helical God, the book that could do for DNA what A Brief History of Time did for the cosmos, Chubb University professor Millie Hunter's a little worried. Since tetrodotoxin is really expensive to buy commercially, she's been extracting it herself from blowfish just in case she wants some for her lab. Now, someone seems to have pinched the deadly stuff from the unlocked refrigerator where she kept it. Millie tells her dad, medical examiner Patrick O'Donnell, to be on the lookout for anyone who might have been killed by the rare toxin, which paralyzes its victims within minutes of exposure. And sure enough, at a dinner party hosted by publishing mogul Max Tunbull and his Russian second wife, Davina, Jim and Millie's old friend John Hall, one of the few close friends of the interracial couple, keels over with all the classic tetrodotoxin symptoms. Since John is Max's long-lost son, suspicion initially centers on the Tunbulls. After all, Max's brother Ivan and nephew Val, not to mention the hysterically possessive Davina, mother of Max's infant son, would all stand to lose if John had wanted a share of Max's fortune. But the next to die is Chubb University Press' Head Scholar Thomas Tinkerman, a sanctimonious theologian looking to obstruct the publication of Jim's masterpiece. Now the Hunters are suspects, too. So when he's not dining on the delectables his wife, Desdemona, dishes up as she recovers from postpartum depression, Delmonico has the thankless task of investigating who may have pushed his cousin's research a step too far. The fourth entry in McCullough's cockamamie series takes the do-it-yourself spirit to new and distasteful extremes.]] Copyright Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.