Another epitychia (success) in this Greek mystery series.
The horrific slaughter of a child refugee will put Chief Officer Yianis Patronas’ sworn duty to uphold the law to the supreme test.
In this timely third Greek Islands Mystery, Patronas has by now “learned far more about forensics than he wanted to know” and has earned the nickname “Poirot” from colleagues. But Patronas knows better. In solving two previous murders, “he’d been lucky; that was all.” That’s a little harsh, and in future books it would be nice to see him gain in expertise and become worthy of his nickname. Until then, he has been brought to Sifnos along with octogenarian priest Papa Michalis, now on leave from the church to work with the police department (“he was especially good at ferreting out the truth, even from the worst offenders”); bumbling Evangelos Demos (“who squealed like a pig at the sight of blood”); and Giorgos Tembelos. Patronas refers to them as “the three stooges in uniform.” But this case is no laughing matter. The young Pakistani boy—7 or 8 years old—was found by a beautiful ceramicist trussed up, drained of blood, and hung over a pit in a remote excavation site whose name, chillingly, translates in Greek to “death.” Further complicating the case is the rise of anti-refugee sentiment as embodied by Chrisi Avgi (the Golden Dawn), a violent group that may be out for revenge for the rape and murder of a Greek girl by a Pakistani. Other suspects are a visiting American professor and his three callow students who are studying ancient religions. Another chilling prospect is that the boy’s ritualistic murder could be the work of an “ena teras,” a monster reviving pagan practices. As in the first two books in the series, Serafim (When the Devil’s Idle, 2015, etc.) deftly weaves police procedural with a visceral sense of place and a deeply rooted knowledge of Greek history and culture, which is often more compelling than the actual mystery. Atheist Patronas’ interplay with Papa Michalis (“the old fellow who thinks he’s Sherlock Holmes”) and the ethical dilemmas faced in dispensing justice are richly rewarding. The case weighs heavily on Patronas, who resists calls to abandon it. “Mark my words,” he is warned, “it’s going to break your heart.”
Another epitychia (success) in this Greek mystery series.Pub Date: Feb. 1, 2017
ISBN: 978-1-60381-244-3
Page Count: 208
Publisher: Coffeetown Press
Review Posted Online: May 26, 2017
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 1, 2017
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
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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