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Bullet in the Wall

A NOVEL

In Cox’s debut thriller, a small-town newspaperman questions the validity of a big-city developer’s most recent land acquisition, leading to murder and a frame-up.
John Rock, editor and publisher of a weekly newspaper in Hermano, California, has his doubts about Wendover Development Corporation. It plans to open a resort on Wendover Island but hasn’t obtained the necessary permits. John, fearing the company will sell shares for land that will never be developed, writes an article scrutinizing the company’s approach. There’s some backlash: Local businessman and chamber of commerce president George Slater pulls his ads from the paper and, Rock suspects, persuades others to do the same. It only gets worse, as Joe Frachia, manager of the marina where John’s live-in boat is docked and whom John already suspects of shady late-night boat runs, beats up the newspaperman. And when someone is found dead, the evidence points to John. The author opens his book with panache: Readers quickly learn that someone has been killed, John is the likely suspect, and his girlfriend, Suzy, had been kidnapped. The story then backtracks to the start of John’s ordeal, deriving suspense from Suzy’s plight. Cox excels at establishing an engrossing protagonist and setting: John has a healthy gun collection, but tormented by inadvertently killing a young boy in Vietnam, he hasn’t fired at a living thing for years; and though the time frame is unclear, the small-town paper utilizes delightfully old-fashioned techniques, e.g., John’s typewriter and physically laying out the newspaper by waxing stories, ads and pictures onto the pages. There are also elements of a classic detective story, including scenes in which John is roughed up. Readers will likely see where the story’s going once John has been framed and has to find his way out of the jam, but Cox deftly keeps the story interesting by throwing in a shocking, sudden explosion, more than one shootout, and even a high-speed chase on water.

Old school, much like John’s newspaper, though its triumph owes more to the author’s competent voice than simple nostalgia.

Pub Date: May 14, 2014

ISBN: 978-1497432925

Page Count: 256

Publisher: CreateSpace

Review Posted Online: Aug. 14, 2014

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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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