A dark, bracing volume in a series that’s making it a habit.
Thiede (Miss Me?, 2015) weaves a gruesome tale of suspense in the fourth book of his Max Larkin series.
This story picks up just where the last adventure left off. Max’s life and career are on a tremendous upswing. He’s just solved yet another challenging case, this one bringing both local acclaim and national media attention to him and his best friend/partner, Jesse. Newfound fame and a job offer with the FBI would be more than enough to keep many gumshoes occupied, but Max finds himself catapulted into a new case almost immediately when, on live TV, an anonymous killer murders an old flame of his, threatening more to come if Max can’t find and stop him. What’s more, the killer holds the entire town hostage, using expertly planted bombs and cameras to force Max to play his twisted game, all while charging strangers for the privilege of watching it unfold on a live webcast. The killer’s sick humor and gamesmanship aren’t particularly novel, but as signs begin pointing toward someone connected to Max’s past, the story takes on new depth, peering into the life of the boy who would become a hero. It’s during these glimpses that the book is at its most complex, revealing sordid details lurking behind small-town living and Max’s personal history. The present day also features some strong character moments. Although there’s not much relationship development between Max and Jesse, that can be attributed to how solid the dynamic has become over the last few books rather than a lack of thought in this episode. Additionally, there’s plenty of development for many of the major romantic relationships, adding some color to a generally grim story. New readers will certainly want to pick up previous installments, but this volume has enough of the breakneck pace and grisly murders—hallmarks of the series—to make it a gripping read even for the uninitiated. Some readers may be put off by the extremes of what Max witnesses, but those with stronger stomachs will feel right at home.
A dark, bracing volume in a series that’s making it a habit.Pub Date: Aug. 12, 2015
ISBN: 978-1-5119-3239-4
Page Count: 266
Publisher: CreateSpace
Review Posted Online: Sept. 16, 2015
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Oct. 15, 2015
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
Irritatingly trite woman-in-periler from lawyer-turned-novelist Baldacci. Moving away from the White House and the white-shoe Washington law firms of his previous bestsellers (Absolute Power, 1996; Total Control, 1997), Baldacci comes up with LuAnn Tyler, a spunky, impossibly beautiful, white-trash truck stop waitress with a no-good husband and a terminally cute infant daughter in tow. Some months after the birth of Lisa, LuAnn gets a phone call summoning her to a make-shift office in an unrented storefront of the local shopping mall. There, she gets a Faustian offer from a Mr. Jackson, a monomaniacal, cross-dressing manipulator who apparently knows the winning numbers in the national lottery before the numbers are drawn. It seems that LuAnn fits the media profile of what a lottery winner should be—poor, undereducated but proud—and if she's willing to buy the right ticket at the right time and transfer most of her winnings to Jackson, she'll be able to retire in luxury. Jackson fails to inform her, however, that if she refuses his offer, he'll have her killed. Before that can happen, as luck would have it, LuAnn barely escapes death when one of husband Duane's drug deals goes bad. She hops on a first-class Amtrak sleeper to Manhattan with a hired executioner in pursuit. But executioner Charlie, one of Jackson's paid handlers, can't help but hear wedding bells when he sees LuAnn cooing with her daughter. Alas, a winning $100- million lottery drawing complicates things. Jackson spirits LuAnn and Lisa away to Sweden, with Charlie in pursuit. Never fear. Not only will LuAnn escape a series of increasingly violent predicaments, but she'll also outwit Jackson, pay an enormous tax bill to the IRS, and have enough left over to honeymoon in Switzerland. Too preposterous to work as feminine wish-fulfillment, too formulaic to be suspenseful. (Book-of-the-Month Club main selection)
Pub Date: Dec. 2, 1997
ISBN: 0-446-52259-7
Page Count: 528
Publisher: N/A
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Oct. 15, 1997
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