Clark’s kickoff to an exciting new character-driven series explores the dynamics between a black investigator and a white...
Nothing can deflect a private investigator from finding the killer of her surrogate father.
Cass Raines was a cop until she and her partner, Detective Ben Mickerson, were almost killed in an incident they had under control until James Farraday, a glory-seeking cop with a lot of clout in the Chicago PD, rushed in and precipitated a gunfight. Raised by her grandparents after her mother died and her father took off, Cass was one of the few African-American women on the force, and she has no tolerance for bullshit. After leaving the force, she hung out her shingle as a private eye. Still wracked with guilt over her inability to prevent Farraday from killing a kid who was about to surrender, she happily works small cases for small money. When Father Raymond Heaton, whom Cass calls Pop, and a gangbanger are found shot dead in St. Brendan’s Church and Farraday catches the case, Cass is determined to find the truth instead of accepting Farraday’s pat answer that Pop killed the kid in a struggle and then killed himself out of guilt. Pop, an activist priest who supported righteous people and causes, had made quite a few enemies but was always giving second chances to even the worst of them. Although his housekeeper, Thea Bey, is no gossip, she gives Cass the names of several people she knows have recently tangled with Pop. Ben Mickerson, who’s also on the case, warns Cass to leave it to the police and then passes her information that may help her. Her search takes her deep into gang territory and off on a wild chase after a mentally disturbed homeless man she believes witnessed the murders. She knows she’s getting close when she becomes a target of the killer, but will she survive to solve the mystery?
Clark’s kickoff to an exciting new character-driven series explores the dynamics between a black investigator and a white world in a story ripped from the headlines.Pub Date: May 29, 2018
ISBN: 978-1-4967-1487-9
Page Count: 352
Publisher: Kensington
Review Posted Online: March 4, 2018
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 15, 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
Eskens’ debut is a solid and thoughtful tale of a young man used to taking on burdens beyond his years—none more dangerous...
A struggling student’s English assignment turns into a mission to solve a 30-year-old murder.
Joe Talbert has had very few breaks in his 21 years. The son of a single and very alcoholic mother, he’s worked hard to save enough money to leave his home in Austin, Minnesota, for the University of Minnesota. Although he has to leave his autistic younger brother, Jeremy Naylor, to the dubious care of their mother, Joe is determined to beat the odds and get his degree. For an assignment in his English class, he decides to interview Carl Iverson, a man convicted of raping and killing a 14-year-old girl. Carl, who maintains his innocence, is dying of cancer and has been released to a nursing home to end his life in lonely but unrepentant pain. The more Joe learns about Carl—a Vietnam vet with two Purple Hearts and a Silver Cross—the more the young man questions the conviction. Joe’s plan to write a short biography and earn an easy A turns into something more. Even after his mother is arrested for drunk driving and guilt-trips Joe into ransacking his college fund to bail her out, he soldiers on with the project, though her irresponsibility forces him to take Jeremy into his care. But it’s his younger brother who cracks the code of the long-dead murder victim’s secret diary and an attractive neighbor, Lila Nash, who has her own agenda for helping Joe solve the mystery, whatever the risk.
Eskens’ debut is a solid and thoughtful tale of a young man used to taking on burdens beyond his years—none more dangerous than championing a bitter old man convicted of a horrific crime.Pub Date: Oct. 14, 2014
ISBN: 978-1-61614-998-7
Page Count: 300
Publisher: Seventh Street Books
Review Posted Online: Oct. 8, 2014
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Oct. 15, 2014
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