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FIRST LADY

Start buffing up those awards now.

It's taken Malone a dozen years (Times Witness, 1989) to return to Hillston, North Carolina, and its chief of police, curmudgeonly savant Cudberth (Cuddy) Mangum, and its homicide chief, echt aristocratic southerner Justin B.Savile V—but the excruciatingly long writing time has resulted in an award-caliber tale of murder, despair, and backroom deals. While Cuddy and JBFive are trying to identify the name of the second, hideously mutilated victim of the press-dubbed “Guess Who?” serial killer, mathematics professor Tyler Norris is on trial for the murder of his pregnant wife. Despite Judge Turbot's obvious belief in his guilt, his community standing and the wiley antics of old-time lawyer Isaac Rosethorn will probably set him free. Meanwhile, JBFive, despondent over the death of his infant son and separated from his wife Alice, has not only started drinking and smoking again, but has become mesmerized by touring rock superstar Mavis Mahar. The Guess Who killer is leaving taunting clues in Cuddy's office, around the courthouse, and even on the next few bodies, one of whom is thought to be Mavis and is barely covered by Governor Andy Brookside's raincoat, which quickly disappears in the arms of one of his aides. Two Guatemalan crones will die, as will Judge Turbot, before Cuddy stalemates the interfering attorney general, JBFive deciphers some of the more cryptic clues, and the Guess Who murderer is in their sights. The result: gorgeous writing—is there anyone better than a southerner at the top of his form?—and a near-perfect dovetailing of two instances of problematic love, the right-hand-washing-the-left over political lunches, as well as a passel of heroes to root for, including a cancer-stricken fed, a cop and his dog partner, an ageing black blues pianist and a first lady true to her southern roots—and marriage vows.

Start buffing up those awards now.

Pub Date: Sept. 17, 2001

ISBN: 1-57071-743-5

Page Count: 432

Publisher: Sourcebooks

Review Posted Online: June 24, 2010

Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 1, 2001

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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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