Though the plot eventually bogs down in details of civic malfeasance, nobody is better than DuBois at kicking his reluctant...
His 10th case drives a deep wedge—make that several wedges—between former government research analyst Lewis Cole and his long-standing comrade in arms Felix Tinios.
The first barrier between Lewis and the shady “security consultant” who’s helped him in so many freelance quests for justice (Dark Victory, 2016, etc.) is prison bars. Felix has been arrested for shooting New Hampshire businessman/politico Fletcher Moore twice in the head, and Assistant Attorney General Deb Moran, rejoicing in a banquet of evidence that includes a record of Moore’s appointment with Felix, surveillance video that places him at the scene, and a murder weapon licensed to him and sporting his fingerprints, is looking for the death penalty. What makes Lewis feel even more helpless is that even though he comes to court every day to watch Hollis Spinelli, the hapless lawyer inexplicably defending Felix instead of Raymond Drake, his usual attorney, dig his client deeper into a hole, he can’t talk to Felix, who’s refused to add Lewis to his visitors list, or even to Hollis, who puts him off first with blather, then with a menacing thug. When Boston FBI agent Alan Krueger tells Lewis that he really ought to make some inquiries to help Felix, Lewis is inclined to agree, even though he’s lost the press credentials that would normally give him cover. Instead, he finds himself working on a bogus federal contract for a bogus magazine article, with alleged allies he can’t trust any further, evidently, than his old friend.
Though the plot eventually bogs down in details of civic malfeasance, nobody is better than DuBois at kicking his reluctant hero into action or at rooting every complication in something that feels disconcertingly like the normal rhythms of life outside the justice system.Pub Date: Nov. 22, 2016
ISBN: 978-1-68177-233-2
Page Count: 256
Publisher: Pegasus Crime
Review Posted Online: Aug. 30, 2016
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 15, 2016
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
A suspenseful, professional-grade north country procedural whose heroine, a deft mix of compassion and attitude, would be...
Box takes another break from his highly successful Joe Pickett series (Stone Cold, 2014, etc.) for a stand-alone about a police detective, a developmentally delayed boy, and a package everyone in North Dakota wants to grab.
Cassandra Dewell can’t leave Montana’s Lewis and Clark County fast enough for her new job as chief investigator for Jon Kirkbride, sheriff of Bakken County. She leaves behind no memories worth keeping: her husband is dead, her boss has made no bones about disliking her, and she’s looking forward to new responsibilities and the higher salary underwritten by North Dakota’s sudden oil boom. But Bakken County has its own issues. For one thing, it’s cold—a whole lot colder than the coldest weather Cassie’s ever imagined. For another, the job she turns out to have been hired for—leading an investigation her new boss doesn’t feel he can entrust to his own force—makes her queasy. The biggest problem, though, is one she doesn’t know about until it slaps her in the face. A fatal car accident that was anything but accidental has jarred loose a stash of methamphetamines and cash that’s become the center of a battle between the Sons of Freedom, Bakken County’s traditional drug sellers, and MS-13, the Salvadorian upstarts who are muscling in on their territory. It’s a setup that leaves scant room for law enforcement officers or for Kyle Westergaard, the 12-year-old paperboy damaged since birth by fetal alcohol syndrome, who’s walked away from the wreck with a prize all too many people would kill for.
A suspenseful, professional-grade north country procedural whose heroine, a deft mix of compassion and attitude, would be welcome to return and tie up the gaping loose end Box leaves. The unrelenting cold makes this the perfect beach read.Pub Date: July 28, 2015
ISBN: 978-0-312-58321-7
Page Count: 272
Publisher: Minotaur
Review Posted Online: April 21, 2015
Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 15, 2015
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