Not so much mysterious as fatalistic, with each revelation leading as inevitably as destiny to the next.
A fourth case soaked in equal parts blood and sadness beckons Ryan DeMarco, former sergeant with the Pennsylvania State Police.
Already mourning his dead son, DeMarco, together with his partner and lover, Jayme Matson, wakes up every morning anguished over the miscarriage she suffered in pursuing their last case in A Long Way Down (2019). But he doesn’t feel he can turn down his old boss Capt. Kyle Bowen’s request for help after a father and his two young sons make a grisly discovery in the woods outside Otter Creek Township: a burned-out car containing two dead women close to the corpse of a naked man pinned to a tree truck with three rods of rebar. It’s hard enough just to identify the corpses; it’s even harder to get leads on Luthor Reddick, the hush-hush online antiques dealer who looks increasingly like the killer; and it’s hardest of all to close the case when at least two of Reddick’s associates are perfectly willing to confess to the murders themselves. As Silvis spins a characteristically atmospheric web, DeMarco can hear the footsteps of Daksh Khatri, the confederate who eluded the dragnet that brought down double murderer Connor McBride, as Khatri, who’s clearly determined to hurt him and Jayme in the worst way possible, draws closer and closer.
Not so much mysterious as fatalistic, with each revelation leading as inevitably as destiny to the next.Pub Date: Aug. 4, 2020
ISBN: 978-1-4926-6562-5
Page Count: 448
Publisher: Poisoned Pen
Review Posted Online: June 2, 2020
Kirkus Reviews Issue: June 15, 2020
Not the best of Connelly’s procedurals, but nobody else does them better than his second-best.
A snap of the yo-yo string yanks Harry Bosch out of retirement yet again.
Los Angeles Councilman Jake Pearlman has resurrected the LAPD’s Open-Unsolved Unit in order to reopen the case of his kid sister, Sarah, whose 1994 murder was instantly eclipsed in the press by the O.J. Simpson case when it broke a day later. Since not even a councilor can reconstitute a police unit for a single favored case, Det. Renée Ballard and her mostly volunteer (read: unpaid) crew are expected to reopen some other cold cases as well, giving Bosch a fresh opportunity to gather evidence against Finbar McShane, the crooked manager he’s convinced executed industrial contractor Stephen Gallagher, his wife, and their two children in 2013 and buried them in a single desert grave. The case has haunted Bosch more than any other he failed to close, and he’s fine to work the Pearlman homicide if it’ll give him another crack at McShane. As it turns out, the Pearlman case is considerably more interesting—partly because the break that leads the unit to a surprising new suspect turns out to be both fraught and misleading, partly because identifying the killer is only the beginning of Bosch’s problems. The windup of the Gallagher murders, a testament to sweating every detail and following every lead wherever it goes, is more heartfelt but less wily and dramatic. Fans of the aging detective who fear that he might be mellowing will be happy to hear that “putting him on a team did not make him a team player.”
Not the best of Connelly’s procedurals, but nobody else does them better than his second-best.Pub Date: Nov. 8, 2022
ISBN: 978-0-316-48565-4
Page Count: 400
Publisher: Little, Brown
Review Posted Online: Sept. 27, 2022
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Oct. 15, 2022
As an adjunct member says, “You’re not a family, you’re a force.” Exactly, though not in the way you’d expect.
The ne’er-do-well son of a successful Irish American family gets dragged into criminal complications that suggest the rest of the Devlins aren’t exactly the upstanding citizens they appear.
The first 35 years in the life of Thomas “TJ” Devlin have been one disappointment after another to his parents, lawyers who founded a prosperous insurance and reinsurance firm, and his more successful siblings, John and Gabby. A longtime alcoholic who’s been unemployable ever since he did time for an incident involving his ex-girlfriend Carrie’s then 2-year-old daughter, TJ is nominally an investigator for Devlin & Devlin, but everyone knows the post is a sinecure. Things change dramatically when golden-boy John tells TJ that he just killed Neil Lemaire, an accountant for D&D client Runstan Electronics. Their speedy return to the murder scene reveals no corpse, so the brothers breathe easier—until Lemaire turns up shot to death in his car. John’s way of avoiding anything that might jeopardize his status as heir apparent to D&D is to throw TJ under the bus, blaming him for everything John himself has done and adding that you can’t trust anything his brother has said since he’s fallen off the wagon. TJ, who’s maintained his sobriety a day at a time for nearly two years, feels outraged, but neither the police investigating the murder nor his nearest and dearest care about his feelings. Forget the forgettable mystery, whose solution will leave you shrugging instead of gasping, and focus on the circular firing squad of the Devlins, and you’ll have a much better time than TJ.
As an adjunct member says, “You’re not a family, you’re a force.” Exactly, though not in the way you’d expect.Pub Date: March 26, 2024
ISBN: 9780525539704
Page Count: 384
Publisher: Putnam
Review Posted Online: Jan. 5, 2024
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 1, 2024
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