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FATAL HARBOR

It’s also definitely incomplete. This sequel probably should have been published as Part 2 of Deadly Cove (2011), which...

Lewis Cole is determined to get the anti-nuclear activist who put his best friend in a coma. And not just to send him to prison.

Lewis was on the scene at the Falconer nuclear plant when a demonstration run amok claimed three and a half lives. The half was that of Diane Woods, of the Tyler Police Department, whom Curt Chesak, leader of the Nuclear Freedom Front, beat with an iron pipe. Unfortunately, the reclusive Chesak’s guilt is a lot clearer than his whereabouts. Professor Heywood Knowlton, his friend and mentor at Boston University, sneers that he wouldn’t tell Lewis where Chesak was even if he knew. Lawrence Todd Thomas, the retired D.C. analyst whose son was another Falconer casualty, is eager to help, but he can’t locate Chesak either. So Lewis is left with no one but his buddy Felix Tinios for company as he beats the bushes looking for Chesak. But as an ex–Defense Department intelligence analyst, he’s not only ruthless about meting out rough justice, but resourceful in finding his prey. When he gets warned off the case by his sometime-girlfriend, Annie Wynn, and by Detective Pete Renzi of the New Hampshire State Police, Lewis thinks twice, but both thoughts are bloody. Unlike the Corleone family, Lewis doesn’t think it’s just business; it’s definitely personal.

It’s also definitely incomplete. This sequel probably should have been published as Part 2 of Deadly Cove (2011), which presented the Falconer demonstration up close and personal. Unless you're still as haunted as Lewis is by the events of Part 1, you may think you’re walking into the less-interesting half of a single tale.

Pub Date: May 15, 2014

ISBN: 978-1-60598-562-6

Page Count: 256

Publisher: Pegasus Crime

Review Posted Online: April 2, 2014

Kirkus Reviews Issue: April 15, 2014

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A CONSPIRACY OF BONES

Forget about solving all these crimes; the signal triumph here is (spoiler) the heroine’s survival.

Another sweltering month in Charlotte, another boatload of mysteries past and present for overworked, overstressed forensic anthropologist Temperance Brennan.

A week after the night she chases but fails to catch a mysterious trespasser outside her town house, some unknown party texts Tempe four images of a corpse that looks as if it’s been chewed by wild hogs, because it has been. Showboat Medical Examiner Margot Heavner makes it clear that, breaking with her department’s earlier practice (The Bone Collection, 2016, etc.), she has no intention of calling in Tempe as a consultant and promptly identifies the faceless body herself as that of a young Asian man. Nettled by several errors in Heavner’s analysis, and even more by her willingness to share the gory details at a press conference, Tempe launches her own investigation, which is not so much off the books as against the books. Heavner isn’t exactly mollified when Tempe, aided by retired police detective Skinny Slidell and a host of experts, puts a name to the dead man. But the hints of other crimes Tempe’s identification uncovers, particularly crimes against children, spur her on to redouble her efforts despite the new M.E.’s splenetic outbursts. Before he died, it seems, Felix Vodyanov was linked to a passenger ferry that sank in 1994, an even earlier U.S. government project to research biological agents that could control human behavior, the hinky spiritual retreat Sparkling Waters, the dark web site DeepUnder, and the disappearances of at least four schoolchildren, two of whom have also turned up dead. And why on earth was Vodyanov carrying Tempe’s own contact information? The mounting evidence of ever more and ever worse skulduggery will pull Tempe deeper and deeper down what even she sees as a rabbit hole before she confronts a ringleader implicated in “Drugs. Fraud. Breaking and entering. Arson. Kidnapping. How does attempted murder sound?”

Forget about solving all these crimes; the signal triumph here is (spoiler) the heroine’s survival.

Pub Date: March 17, 2020

ISBN: 978-1-9821-3888-2

Page Count: 352

Publisher: Scribner

Review Posted Online: Dec. 22, 2019

Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 15, 2020

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DARK MATTER

Suspenseful, frightening, and sometimes poignant—provided the reader has a generously willing suspension of disbelief.

A man walks out of a bar and his life becomes a kaleidoscope of altered states in this science-fiction thriller.

Crouch opens on a family in a warm, resonant domestic moment with three well-developed characters. At home in Chicago’s Logan Square, Jason Dessen dices an onion while his wife, Daniela, sips wine and chats on the phone. Their son, Charlie, an appealing 15-year-old, sketches on a pad. Still, an undertone of regret hovers over the couple, a preoccupation with roads not taken, a theme the book will literally explore, in multifarious ways. To start, both Jason and Daniela abandoned careers that might have soared, Jason as a physicist, Daniela as an artist. When Charlie was born, he suffered a major illness. Jason was forced to abandon promising research to teach undergraduates at a small college. Daniela turned from having gallery shows to teaching private art lessons to middle school students. On this bracing October evening, Jason visits a local bar to pay homage to Ryan Holder, a former college roommate who just received a major award for his work in neuroscience, an honor that rankles Jason, who, Ryan says, gave up on his career. Smarting from the comment, Jason suffers “a sucker punch” as he heads home that leaves him “standing on the precipice.” From behind Jason, a man with a “ghost white” face, “red, pursed lips," and "horrifying eyes” points a gun at Jason and forces him to drive an SUV, following preset navigational directions. At their destination, the abductor forces Jason to strip naked, beats him, then leads him into a vast, abandoned power plant. Here, Jason meets men and women who insist they want to help him. Attempting to escape, Jason opens a door that leads him into a series of dark, strange, yet eerily familiar encounters that sometimes strain credibility, especially in the tale's final moments.

Suspenseful, frightening, and sometimes poignant—provided the reader has a generously willing suspension of disbelief.

Pub Date: July 26, 2016

ISBN: 978-1-101-90422-0

Page Count: 352

Publisher: Crown

Review Posted Online: May 3, 2016

Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 15, 2016

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