Notable for its glimpse of a world rarely presented in crime fiction and its refusal to offer the genre’s expected pleasures.
The Head of Casablanca’s CID fights an epidemic of murders and dismemberments that seem to be the work of more than one perp.
On his way to Marrakesh with his family to congratulate his daughter Atiqa and meet his latest grandchild, Mohamed Bineesa, universally known as Detective Hanash (which means “the Snake”), is yanked back home by an urgent call from no less than Mohamed Alami, chief of police. The remains a waste picker has found in two plastic bags at the bottom of a dumpster can’t be identified because they’re limited to “just the lower limbs…minus the genitalia.” Since the killer has left no physical evidence that might identify either himself (herself?) or the victim, Hanash and his squad are left waiting for the next move, which takes the form of another equally horrific murder, and another, and another. Every time the police succeed in wrestling a clue from a new corpse, the crime at hand turns out to be the work of a copycat rather than the original killer, and at times it seems as if everyone in Morocco must be taking advantage of the well-publicized crime spree to rid themselves of personal enemies. Resolving to overlook his daughter Manar’s budding romance with his right-hand man, Inspector Hamid, a good cop who drinks too much, Hanash eventually gets his perp. But it takes a long time (months, not pages), and the results are anything but satisfactory.
Notable for its glimpse of a world rarely presented in crime fiction and its refusal to offer the genre’s expected pleasures.Pub Date: May 5, 2020
ISBN: 978-977-416-968-7
Page Count: 248
Publisher: Hoopoe
Review Posted Online: March 1, 2020
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 15, 2020
This ran in the S.E.P. and resulted in more demands for the story in book form than ever recorded. Well, here it is and it is a honey. Imagine ten people, not knowing each other, not knowing why they were invited on a certain island house-party, not knowing their hosts. Then imagine them dead, one by one, until none remained alive, nor any clue to the murderer. Grand suspense, a unique trick, expertly handled.
Pub Date: Feb. 21, 1939
ISBN: 0062073478
Page Count: 272
Publisher: Dodd, Mead
Review Posted Online: Sept. 20, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 1, 1939
SEEN & HEARD
One protest from an outraged innocent says it all: “This is America. This is Wyoming.”
Once again, Wyoming game warden Joe Pickett gets mixed up in a killing whose principal suspect is his old friend Nate Romanowski, whose attempts to live off the grid keep breaking down in a series of felony charges.
If Judge Hewitt hadn’t bent over to pick up a spoon that had fallen from his dinner table, the sniper set up nearly a mile from his house in the gated community of the Eagle Mountain Club would have ended his life. As it was, the victim was Sue Hewitt, leaving the judge alive and free to rail and threaten anyone he suspected of the shooting. Incoming Twelve Sleep County Sheriff Brendan Kapelow’s interest in using the case to promote his political ambitions and the judge’s inability to see further than his nose make them the perfect targets for a frame-up of Nate, who just wants to be left alone in the middle of nowhere to train his falcons and help his bride, Liv Brannon, raise their baby, Kestrel. Nor are the sniper, the sheriff, and the judge Nate’s only enemies. Orlando Panfile has been sent to Wyoming by the Sinaloan drug cartel to avenge the deaths of the four assassins whose careers Nate and Joe ended last time out (Wolf Pack, 2019). So it’s up to Joe, with some timely data from his librarian wife, Marybeth, to hire a lawyer for Nate, make sure he doesn’t bust out of jail before his trial, identify the real sniper, who continues to take an active role in the proceedings, and somehow protect him from a killer who regards Nate’s arrest as an unwelcome complication. That’s quite a tall order for someone who can’t shoot straight, who keeps wrecking his state-issued vehicles, and whose appalling mother-in-law, Missy Vankeuren Hand, has returned from her latest European jaunt to suck up all the oxygen in Twelve Sleep County to hustle some illegal drugs for her cancer-stricken sixth husband. But fans of this outstanding series will know better than to place their money against Joe.
One protest from an outraged innocent says it all: “This is America. This is Wyoming.”Pub Date: March 3, 2020
ISBN: 978-0-525-53823-3
Page Count: 368
Publisher: Putnam
Review Posted Online: Jan. 12, 2020
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 1, 2020
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