CUT TO THE BONE

Name: CUT TO THE BONE
Author: Alex Caan
ISBN: 978-1-5107-1943-9

by Alex Caan ‧ RELEASE DATE: March 7, 2017

An intriguing concept that sadly boils down to motives that are as predictable and mundane as too many of the so-called...

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The disappearance of a popular young vlogger becomes more sinister when threatening videos of her surface online.

Ruby Day, a fresh, wholesome face in the world of YouTube video stars, made upbeat segments that attracted millions of followers—until one afternoon she told her parents she was going for a walk and never returned. DCI Kate Riley, an American transplant to London, and DS Zain Harris are called in. There’s some question as to how quickly the police can respond to a missing persons report until Riley and Harris realize the request came from the new police crime commissioner, Justin Hope, the man in charge of policing in London. The two detectives turn first, at Ruby’s parents’ insistence, to Dan Grant, a gamer who has his own YouTube video empire and is Ruby’s creepily possessive boyfriend. It’s not long after attention is focused on Dan that videos crop up of Ruby being held, obviously against her will, at an undisclosed location. It’s clear that Caan (this is his American debut) might be trying to juggle too many balls at once when the investigation balloons into not just trying to track down Ruby (no spoilers, but things don’t look great for our missing vlogger, judging from the videos), but also tracing the advertisers, lawyers, and the company involved in producing shows like Ruby's and Dan’s. Things start to sound a little far-fetched when Riley and Harris start talking about connections to mining in the Democratic Republic of Congo. And as for the investigators, they’re a bit too baggage-heavy to be believable; Harris has quick fists that belie a wounded soul beneath while Riley struggles to care for her dementia-riddled mother.

An intriguing concept that sadly boils down to motives that are as predictable and mundane as too many of the so-called twists.

Pub Date: March 7, 2017

ISBN: 978-1-5107-1943-9

Page Count: 436

Publisher: Skyhorse Publishing

Review Posted Online: Dec. 18, 2016

Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 1, 2017

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A CONSPIRACY OF BONES

by Kathy Reichs ‧ RELEASE DATE: March 17, 2020

Forget about solving all these crimes; the signal triumph here is (spoiler) the heroine’s survival.

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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

Categories:

- BOOK REVIEW
COLD, COLD BONES
by Kathy Reichs

- BOOK REVIEW
THE BONE CODE
by Kathy Reichs

- BOOK REVIEW
TWO NIGHTS
by Kathy Reichs

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THE WINNER

by David Baldacci ‧ RELEASE DATE: Dec. 2, 1997

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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)