Reliable procedural entertainment from a pro’s pro, with an ending that guarantees more drama ahead.
Many murders to solve, too, in this latest thicket of felonies for DCI Alan Banks and the staff of the Eastvale Police (Careless Love, 2019, etc.).
Why would whoever stabbed Syrian immigrant Samir Boulad to death take the risk of dumping his body in Edith Grunwell’s trash bin, where the retired nurse found him when she took out her trash? Although Malden Terrace is no more immune from nativist racism than other neighborhoods, the traces of cocaine in the dead boy’s pocket hint at equally sinister connections—from low-end Howard Stokes, a diabetic heroin user found dead in his home, to high-end developer Connor Clive Blaydon, an associate of Albanian Mafia stalwart Leka Gashi who’s more recently partnered with equally dodgy Timmy and Tommy Kerrigan to build Elmet Centre, which, Blaydon piously assures Banks, will do the area no end of good. As Banks and his team make their inquiries, police consultant Nelia Melnic, who’d rather be called Zelda, has problems of her own. A superrecognizer rescued from sex slavery to become a valuable asset to the constabulary and a self-appointed seeker for Phil Keane, an associate of the brothers who first kidnapped Zelda 20 years ago and who almost killed Banks when he set his house on fire, she’s upset to learn that her boss, Trevor Hawkins, has died in an equally suspicious house fire and upset in a completely different way when she suddenly bumps into Goran Tadić, one of her kidnappers. There’ll be precious little downtime for Banks and company, as they’re forced to deal with more mystery, more murder, and some uncomfortable moral conundrums posed for both the characters and readers before Robinson pulls down the curtain, not with a bang but with a final piercing twist.
Reliable procedural entertainment from a pro’s pro, with an ending that guarantees more drama ahead.Pub Date: Jan. 14, 2020
ISBN: 978-0-06-284749-2
Page Count: 384
Publisher: Morrow/HarperCollins
Review Posted Online: Nov. 9, 2019
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Dec. 1, 2019
IN THE NEWS
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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