Redmond, a retired Buffalo homicide detective, fleshes out an intriguing tale with solid procedural detail.
A Buffalo cop’s crucial mistake in an old case comes back to almost literally haunt her.
Lauren Riley and her partner, Shane Reese, are the stars of the Cold Case Homicide Unit. Staying late to finish up some work, Lauren’s attacked by a man wearing police-issue boots who steals her murder book. Only the timely return of Reese, who’s come back for his hat, saves her life. Her two college-age daughters, Lindsey and Erin, and her snowbird parents keep vigil at her hospital bedside, and Reese and his dog, Watson, move into the big house Lauren got in a divorce settlement from her wealthy second husband to protect her while she recovers. Lauren’s love life is complicated. Her first husband left when the girls were young. Then she was in an abusive relationship with fellow cop Joe Wheeler. But the man she worries about most is David Spencer, a young man she helped beat a homicide charge (Cold Day in Hell, 2018) before she realized he was guilty. Since Lauren and her friends know her attacker was a cop, they also know they can’t trust anyone, certainly not whomever’s leaking information to the press. The DA tells Lauren and Reese that several calls on an unused tip line that’s still recorded indicate knowledge of an old homicide case that may explain why someone is so desperate to get Lauren’s murder book. Lauren calls on the services of her retired boss, the legendary Charlie Daley, an expert on drugs and vice, who recognizes the voice as that of a former informant. When Joe Wheeler is murdered by an unknown assailant, some people think Reese killed him for mistreating Lauren even though he has a solid alibi. Lauren must walk a dangerous line in order to find the cop willing to kill to hide a secret even as she’s stalked by Spencer.
Redmond, a retired Buffalo homicide detective, fleshes out an intriguing tale with solid procedural detail.Pub Date: Feb. 8, 2019
ISBN: 978-0-7387-5427-7
Page Count: 288
Publisher: Midnight Ink/Llewellyn
Review Posted Online: Nov. 12, 2018
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Dec. 1, 2018
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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