The aggressively disturbing conclusion places this one far beyond the pale of standard procedurals.
An investigation into two dead babies leads the ex-wife of a serial killer and her police officer best friend into serious danger.
As much as Gwen Proctor wishes she could sleep through the night, she’s already awake when she gets an early morning call from her best friend, Kezia Claremont. Gwen’s history of having killed her husband, serial murderer Melvin Royal, means that her senses are always a hairbreadth from panic. Like Gwen’s romantic partner, Sam Cade, and her kids, Lanny and Connor, Kez is used to Gwen’s constant vigilance. She and Gwen have put their shared eyes for trouble into their work, Gwen as an investigator and Kez as a police officer. This time Kez needs Gwen’s emotional support more than her professional expertise. The two meet at a small pond where a car is submerged with twin baby girls still strapped into their car seats. It’s a rough scene made even more difficult for Kez, who’s just learned that she’s pregnant and is processing the good news alone because her partner, Javier, is away on duty with the Marines. Kez and Gwen’s investigations lead them to the girls’ likely mother, Sheryl Lansdowne, who might well have drowned her babies and run off if she was onto a quick buck. But Gwen’s certain there’s something bigger at play, particularly when her family is targeted for harassment by someone convinced that Gwen’s history as Gina Royal makes her just as culpable as Melvin. The slow-burning investigation goes to some dark places. Fans of Caine's Stillhouse Lake series may be prepared for the grim climax; the uninitiated should brace themselves for a quick turn into some deeply troubling stuff.
The aggressively disturbing conclusion places this one far beyond the pale of standard procedurals.Pub Date: March 9, 2021
ISBN: 978-1-5420-9367-5
Page Count: 336
Publisher: Thomas & Mercer
Review Posted Online: Dec. 14, 2020
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 1, 2021
Perhaps the single most striking feature of this latest dose of intrigue is that its title is intended to be taken literally.
The eternal jostling for power in Rome and the Vatican is juiced by a development that attracts the attention of the Magellan Billet and its foremost alumnus, Cotton Malone.
Eric Gaetano Casaburi, secretary of Italy’s National Freedom Party, anticipates a decisive victory for the party if Sergio Cardinal Ascolani, the Vatican’s secretary of state, will lend his full-throated support. Of course, the Church isn’t supposed to meddle in contemporary politics, but Eric makes an offer he doesn’t think Ascolani can refuse. Five hundred years ago, Giuliano di Lorenzo de’ Medici loaned Pope Julius II ten million florins the Church never repaid. That debt is still legally payable to anyone who proves to be a surviving member of the Medici family, and Eric believes he can prove exactly that. Although Malone, called in to investigate the bona fides of Ascolani’s enemy Jason Cardinal Richter, has already found a fortune hidden in Richter’s apartment, Richter swears that he’s being framed, and the violent deaths of three anonymous functionaries seem to bear him out. So, Malone forges a series of alliances with Richter, with wealthy businesswoman Camilla Baines, and ultimately with an even more surprising party to prevent Ascolani and Thomas Dewberry, a hired assassin who’s both a sociopath and a devout Catholic, from swaying the upcoming election in return for Eric’s forgiving the ancient debt. An extended closing note shows how inventively Berry mingled history and fiction to weave this tangled web. Readers invested in learning more about the Medicis can be assured that the brief glimpse of them in a prologue set in 1512 is only the beginning.
Perhaps the single most striking feature of this latest dose of intrigue is that its title is intended to be taken literally.Pub Date: Feb. 11, 2025
ISBN: 9781538770566
Page Count: 416
Publisher: Grand Central Publishing
Review Posted Online: Jan. 18, 2025
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 15, 2025
Forget the tangled backstory, focus on the game of cat and mouse, and enjoy.
Lt. Eve Dallas and her colleagues in the New York Police and Security Department step outside their comfort zone into counterterrorism.
Back in 2024, during the stressful time of the Urban Wars, a courageous band calling themselves The Twelve fought Dominion and other violent fringe groups that sought to end civilization as we know it, despite the presence of a traitor in their own midst. Now, 37 years later, someone’s killed Giovanni Rossi, a retired cybersecurity expert who was one of The Twelve, an hour or so after a summons—ostensibly from another veteran of the group—brought him from Rome to New York. On the body, officers called to the scene find a copy of Dallas’ business card that’s been embellished with a flamboyant threat to annihilate the seven surviving members of The Twelve. Obligingly inviting all seven to New York—a move you’d think would make it a lot easier for their nemesis to wipe them all out at once—Dallas soon forms a theory about the killer’s identity and sets a trap to draw him out. But her plan turns into a narrow miss, upping the stakes on both sides, for now the killer knows Dallas is on to him. It’s in the nature of the case that there’s less mystery and detection than usual in this long-running franchise—the biggest surprise turns out to be the connection between Dallas and her quarry—but the thrills keep on coming, and the final interrogation, though highly predictable in its broad outlines, is as satisfying as ever.
Forget the tangled backstory, focus on the game of cat and mouse, and enjoy.Pub Date: Feb. 4, 2025
ISBN: 9781250370792
Page Count: 368
Publisher: St. Martin's
Review Posted Online: Nov. 23, 2024
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 1, 2025
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