A riveting crime tale involving slippery police dealings.
A political scandal rocks the red-light district of Hamburg, Germany.
Sarda’s gripping second novel—like his debut, Cash-n-Carry (2012)—is a crime thriller. With the verve of a James Bond escapade, the tale’s first scene sets the high-velocity plot in motion. Lars Hanson, a homicide detective, is at a blackjack table when a mysterious goon known as “the giant” targets him. Hanson bolts out the door and hits the streets of Hamburg on his Harley. Soon, a black van accelerates “into his path, its battering ram nearly grazing his right leg.” Because of the complex storyline and intertwined subplots, this isn’t the kind of novel that readers can follow if they gloss over occasional passages. The text is tightly written and challenging, with about 30 characters in key roles in a high-stakes political power scheme. High on the cast list are police investigators Thomas Ritter, a former special-ops commando, and his new partner, Motz Beck, who has ties to the Mafia. They eventually learn that the last person in the world they should trust is each other. A new character (or two) barges into each chapter. Some are likable and others, anything but, yet all will pique readers’ curiosity. (At the end of the book, Sarda provides a useful feature: a roster of the names and roles of the main characters.) The story’s mix creates a Fellini-esque sensation as scenes change at a dizzying speed. The disjointed action thunders nonstop through the red-light district of Hamburg, where a major police and political scandal unfolds. Some sex workers have important roles in the tale. Along the way, the author delivers several surprises. In one bizarre scene, Motz goes to a cemetery, pulls up a plant beside a grave, and starts digging with a spade. He finds five plastic-coated bricks, each containing a stack of 50 euro notes that Hanson stole from the police station’s property room. Amid this serious business, Sarda sprinkles in lighter moments (“Needles of rain pelted” Hanson’s face “as he weaved in and out of bike paths....A kid waved at him from one of the windows”). The absorbing story will keep readers guessing until the final pages.
A riveting crime tale involving slippery police dealings.Pub Date: Nov. 22, 2020
ISBN: 978-3-9822665-2-7
Page Count: 280
Publisher: Highway 99 Press
Review Posted Online: Feb. 24, 2021
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
Gloriously artificial, improbable, and ingenious. Fans of both versions of Horowitz will rejoice.
What begins as a decorous whodunit set in a gated community on the River Thames turns out to be another metafictional romp for mystery writer Anthony Horowitz and his frequent collaborator, ex-DI Daniel Hawthorne.
Everyone in Riverview Close hates Giles Kenworthy, an entitled hedge fund manager who bought Riverview Lodge from chess grandmaster Adam Strauss when the failure of Adam’s chess-themed TV show forced him and his wife, Teri, to downsize to The Stables at the opposite end of the development. So the surprise when Kenworthy’s wife, retired air hostess Lynda, returns home from an evening out with her French teacher, Jean-François, to find her husband’s dead body is mainly restricted to the manner of his death: He’s been shot through the throat with an arrow. Suspects include—and seem to be limited to—Richmond GP Dr. Tom Beresford and his wife, jewelry designer Gemma; widowed ex-nuns May Winslow and Phyllis Moore; and retired barrister Andrew Pennington, whose name is one of many nods to Agatha Christie. Detective Superintendent Tariq Khan, feeling outside his element, calls in Hawthorne and his old friend John Dudley as consultants, and eventually the case is marked as solved. Five years later, Horowitz, needing to plot and write a new novel on short notice, asks Hawthorne if he can supply enough information about the case to serve as its basis, launching another prickly collaboration in which Hawthorne conceals as much as he reveals. To say more, as usual with this ultrabrainy series, would spoil the string of surprises the real-life author has planted like so many explosive devices.
Gloriously artificial, improbable, and ingenious. Fans of both versions of Horowitz will rejoice.Pub Date: April 16, 2024
ISBN: 9780063305649
Page Count: 384
Publisher: Harper/HarperCollins
Review Posted Online: Jan. 20, 2024
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 15, 2024
Squeamish readers will find this isn’t their cup of tea.
Dexter meets Killing Eve in Wallace’s dark comic thriller debut.
While accepting condolences following her father’s funeral, 30-something narrator Claire receives an email saying that one of her paintings is a finalist for a prize. But her joy is short-circuited the next morning when she learns in a second apologetic note that the initial email had been sent to the wrong Claire. The sender, Lucas Kane, is “terribly, terribly sorry” for his mistake. Claire, torn between her anger and suicidal thoughts, has doubts about his sincerity and stalks him to a London pub, where his fate is sealed: “I stare at Lucas Kane in real life, and within moments I know. He doesn’t look sorry.” She dispatches and buries Lucas in her back garden, but this crime does not go unnoticed. Proud of her meticulous standards as a serial killer, Claire wonders if her grief for her father is making her reckless as she seeks to identify the blackmailer among the members of her weekly bereavement support group. The female serial killer as antihero is a growing subgenre (see Oyinkan Braithwaite’s My Sister, the Serial Killer, 2018), and Wallace’s sociopathic protagonist is a mordantly amusing addition; the tool she uses to interact with ordinary people while hiding her homicidal nature is especially sardonic: “Whenever I’m unsure of how I’m expected to respond, I use a cliché. Even if I’m not sure what it means, even if I use it incorrectly, no one ever seems to mind.” The well-written storyline tackles some tough subjects—dementia, elder abuse, and parental cruelty—but the convoluted plot starts to drag at the halfway point. Given the lack of empathy in Claire’s narration, most of the characters come across as not very likable, and the reader tires of her sneering contempt.
Squeamish readers will find this isn’t their cup of tea.Pub Date: April 16, 2024
ISBN: 9780143136170
Page Count: 336
Publisher: Penguin
Review Posted Online: Feb. 3, 2024
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 1, 2024
© Copyright 2024 Kirkus Media LLC. All Rights Reserved.
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