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SNOW WHITE MUST DIE

This emotional page turner, fueled by unexpected plot twists, marks the American debut of Germany’s best-selling suspense...

It takes a village to concoct an alibi.

Now that Tobias Sartorius has come home to Altenhain after 10 years in the German prison system for the murders of Stefanie, who threw him over, and her pal Laura, his former girlfriend, much has changed. His parents have divorced, the family cafe has gone out of business and the family home is in such disrepair that no self-respecting rat would live in it. What remains is the enmity of those who will never forgive him for what he did to those teenage girls, whose bodies have never been found. Tobi is shunned, then beaten with bats. And he still has no memory of what he’s done—probably because, as police detectives Oliver von Bodenstein, going through a rocky patch in his marriage, and Pia Kirchhoff, fighting off the legal demolition of her farm, come to realize, he may not have actually done anything. The only villager who believes in him is newcomer Amelie, waitress at the Black Horse, who eavesdrops on conversations that hint at who may have just pushed Tobi’s mother off an overpass, who ambushed him and why they seem to be overly beholden to local nabob Terlinden, whose favors always have a catch. Terlinden’s son Lars used to be Tobi’s best friend. His twin, Thies, an autistic mute, now seems enamored of Amelie and shares his secret paintings with her. Do they implicate the cultural minister in past crimes? Or Tobi’s old pals, including former tomboy Nadia, now a gorgeous cinema star? While Oliver’s marriage crumbles and Pia scrambles to cover his lapses on the job, Amelie disappears, then Thies, and all the village secrets must be uncovered before the innocent can be redeemed.

This emotional page turner, fueled by unexpected plot twists, marks the American debut of Germany’s best-selling suspense writer, whose targets include the bourgeois, the overly solicitous and the rationalizations that lead to tragedy.

Pub Date: Jan. 15, 2013

ISBN: 978-0-312-60425-7

Page Count: 352

Publisher: Minotaur

Review Posted Online: Oct. 23, 2012

Kirkus Reviews Issue: Nov. 15, 2012

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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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BADLANDS

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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