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A Reservation for Murder

A LIEUTENANT MORALES MYSTERY

From the Lieutenant Morales Mysteries series

Readers will surely root for this good-natured gumshoe.

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The second in Basinski’s (Dead in the Water, 2015, etc.) thriller series finds returning retired cop Lt. Mario Morales cutting his vacation short when he reluctantly joins a murder investigation.

Morales hasn’t even checked into the Bonita Inn on Florida’s Palm Island when he hears about a floating cooler with pieces of a body inside. But he’s there to spend time with Sun Li, hoping their friendship will develop into something more. After several days, the local chief of police (and fellow LAPD officer back in the day), Ed Shipley, asks Morales for help finding whomever shot and killed the victim, Mark Sullivan. Morales says no thanks, but when Sun Li unexpectedly splits, a letter left as explanation, he changes his mind. Ed believes Sullivan may have found gold, an alleged batch the CIA lent to the Cuban government in the ’60s that went missing. That’s not quite as shocking as someone taking a shot at Ed and Morales, though it’s unclear which one was the target. Morales heads to his home base of Little Havana for intel from the CIA and eventually confirms that someone’s definitely trying to kill him. He gradually uncovers a web of deceit surrounding Sullivan, as well as another body, and soon worries that Sun Li didn’t leave—not willingly, at least. Basinski quickly builds sympathy for his protagonist with Morales’ undeniable devotion to Sun Li. The ex-cop is slow to start questioning people, but once he does, the case escalates. He adds a suspect or two, for example, attempting to link Sullivan to the second murder, and with credible evidence, including an insurance policy and blackmail, red herrings aren’t easy to identify. An incriminating clue near the end perhaps too conveniently points to a killer, but that doesn’t make the inevitable confrontation any less intense. Morales’ first-person narrative makes him even more endearing, describing his surroundings not like a meticulous detective but an ordinary guy; a dinner table, for example, reminds him of Sunday meals with his grandma.

Readers will surely root for this good-natured gumshoe.

Pub Date: July 22, 2016

ISBN: 978-1-5238-6390-7

Page Count: 176

Publisher: CreateSpace

Review Posted Online: Nov. 18, 2016

Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 1, 2017

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BADLANDS

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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THE A LIST

Proficient but eminently predictable. Amid all the time shifts and embedded backstories, the most surprising feature is how...

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A convicted killer’s list of five people he wants dead runs the gamut from the wife he’s already had murdered to franchise heroine Ali Reynolds.

Back in the day, women came from all over to consult Santa Clarita fertility specialist Dr. Edward Gilchrist. Many of them left his care happily pregnant, never dreaming that the father of the babies they carried was none other than the physician himself, who donated his own sperm rather than that of the handsome, athletic, disease-free men pictured in his scrapbook. When Alexandra Munsey’s son, Evan, is laid low by the kidney disease he’s inherited from his biological father and she returns to Gilchrist in search of the donor’s medical records, the roof begins to fall in on him. By the time it’s done falling, he’s serving a life sentence in Folsom Prison for commissioning the death of his wife, Dawn, the former nurse and sometime egg donor who’d turned on him. With nothing left to lose, Gilchrist tattoos himself with the initials of five people he blames for his fall: Dawn; Leo Manuel Aurelio, the hit man he’d hired to dispose of her; Kaitlyn Todd, the nurse/receptionist who took Dawn’s place; Alex Munsey, whose search for records upset his apple cart; and Ali Reynolds, the TV reporter who’d helped put Alex in touch with the dozen other women who formed the Progeny Project because their children looked just like hers. No matter that Ali’s been out of both California and the news business for years; Gilchrist and his enablers know that revenge can’t possibly be served too cold. Wonder how far down that list they’ll get before Ali, aided once more by Frigg, the methodical but loose-cannon AI first introduced in Duel to the Death (2018), turns on them?

Proficient but eminently predictable. Amid all the time shifts and embedded backstories, the most surprising feature is how little the boundary-challenged AI, who gets into the case more or less inadvertently, differs from your standard human sidekick with issues.

Pub Date: April 2, 2019

ISBN: 978-1-5011-5101-9

Page Count: 352

Publisher: Gallery Books/Simon & Schuster

Review Posted Online: Feb. 18, 2019

Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 1, 2019

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