A moving, grippingly relevant mystery.
Young neo-Nazis in Rancho Santa Elena, a quiet Southern California town, conduct a campaign of hate crimes against minorities, leading police detective Ben Wade to uncover a widespread White supremacist conspiracy.
Set in 1987, this thriller focuses on Jacob, a 14-year-old boy who’s recruited into a gang of skinheads by his 20-something neighbor Ian after Ian sees him testing out homemade pipe bombs in his backyard. Ian, the son of a corrupt councilman whose eldest son was killed in Vietnam, has terrorized a Vietnamese shop owner named Bao Phan and his family by leaving a fatally poisoned, throat-slit dog by their back door. Jacob, the abused son of a traumatized Vietnam veteran, is officially inducted as a skinhead after being pressured to brutally attack Mexican migrant workers. Shocked to discover his father is having an affair with a young Vietnamese woman—Bao’s 22-year-old daughter, Linh—Jacob is overcome with rage. Meanwhile, having left the LAPD, worn down by gang wars in that city, Wade is surprised to confront an even worse form of violence in Rancho Santa Elena. In Los Angeles, there was a logic to the gang wars, which were over drugs, territory, and money. “This is just hate,” he says. “Nothing rational about it.” Though set in the past, at a time when the internet was first enabling hate groups opposed to the very existence of the federal government to link up via online bulletin boards, Drew’s sequel to Shadow Man (2017) could hardly speak more powerfully to the present moment in the United States. A terrific crime novel with an explosive climax, the book dares to find a level of empathy with its young perpetrators, connecting the dots between being frightened and “walking around in the dark” and turning to hate.
A moving, grippingly relevant mystery.Pub Date: June 14, 2022
ISBN: 978-0-399-59212-6
Page Count: 416
Publisher: Random House
Review Posted Online: March 24, 2022
Kirkus Reviews Issue: April 15, 2022
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
As the prosecutor sadly observes: “All this because of a dead buffalo.”
Idyllic Catalina Island turns out to be just as crime infested as the rest of Los Angeles County in the latest series launch by the creator of Harry Bosch, Renée Ballard, and the Lincoln Lawyer.
Det. Sgt. Stilwell has been bounced off the county homicide squad and rusticized to Catalina, where the exclusive Black Marlin Club won’t admit even four-term Avalon Mayor Doug Allen to full membership and the most serious infraction seems to be the killing and cutting up of a buffalo, presumably by Henry Gaston, who operates Island Mystery Tours when he’s not threatening endangered species. All that changes with the discovery of a body sunk in the surrounding waters. The corpse, most recognizable by its streak of purple hair, is that of Leigh-Anne Moss, a Black Marlin server recently fired for fraternizing with members and guests she sees as potential sugar daddies. Stilwell is sufficiently invested in her murder to compete vigorously over jurisdiction with Rex Ahearn, the LA County homicide detective who kept his job when Stilwell lost his. Their rivalry, fueled by mutual contempt, is only the first hint that Stilwell will end up fighting his counterparts in law enforcement and local government at least as hard as he fights crooks like hit man Merris Spivak and Oscar “Baby Head” Terranova, Henry’s boss, who comes under sharper scrutiny when Henry disappears and ends up dead himself. Connelly handles his hero’s obligatory romance with assistant harbormaster Tash Dano and his increasingly wary alliance with assistant D.A. Monika Juarez with equal professionalism, and if the wrap-up leaves some loose ends dangling, well, that’s what franchises are for.
As the prosecutor sadly observes: “All this because of a dead buffalo.”Pub Date: May 20, 2025
ISBN: 9780316588485
Page Count: 352
Publisher: Little, Brown
Review Posted Online: April 19, 2025
Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 15, 2025
Not much mystery, but plenty of thrills for readers open to another peek at the skeletons inside the heroine’s family closet.
A legal error in a routine arrest leads Seattle cold case detective Tracy Crosswhite down another harrowing trip into her family’s tormented past.
What’s especially galling is that the error isn’t even Tracy’s. The handgun that Det. Kinsington Rowe, her old partner in Violent Crimes, confiscated from Erik Schmidt during a drug bust was identified as the weapon used to kill Julia Hoch and Bridgette Traugott. But because Rowe ran the firearms test without securing the proper warrant, the judge throws out the evidence and turns Schmidt loose. Before that happens, though, Tracy interrogates Schmidt about the cold cases, and Schmidt, an obvious sociopath, takes the opportunity to taunt Tracy with the news that while he’d been incarcerated on previous drug charges, he’d been especially close to fellow inmate Edmund House, the man who’d kidnapped and murdered Tracy’s sister, Sarah, 30 years ago, leading to her father’s suicide. Convinced that Tracy had worked to set House free so that she could execute him personally, he’s vowed revenge on his late buddy’s behalf. That means doing whatever he can to make life hell for Tracy, her husband and daughter, her nanny, and anyone else in her circle. As Schmidt hatches one intimidating plot after another, Tracy is forced to acknowledge that her own skills aren’t what they used to be. Even her marksmanship has suffered so much that she withdraws to improve it under the guidance of Mason Pettibone, her first shooting instructor. Pettibone, claiming that he’s too old, turns Tracy over to the tutelage of his granddaughter, Lydia “Lightning Strike” Johnson, a dead-eyed shooter who’s on the spectrum, and that’s when things start to get seriously intense.
Not much mystery, but plenty of thrills for readers open to another peek at the skeletons inside the heroine’s family closet.Pub Date: May 27, 2025
ISBN: 9781662524738
Page Count: 395
Publisher: Thomas & Mercer
Review Posted Online: April 19, 2025
Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 15, 2025
© Copyright 2025 Kirkus Media LLC. All Rights Reserved.
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