A solid if unsurprising thriller in need of some restraint.
Old Nazis never die—where would thrillers be without them?
When Skottie Foster, an African-American trooper in the Kansas Highway Patrol, flags down Dr. Travis Roan’s Jeep Wrangler, Grecian (Lost and Gone Forever, 2016, etc.) sets her on a dark and dangerous road. Roan is a Nazi hunter, affiliated with the Noah Roan Foundation, a West Coast version of the Wiesenthal Foundation. Accompanied by an enormous mastiff, Roan is in Kansas to confirm a report identifying Rudolph Bormann, who was once an assistant administrator in Mauthausen-Gusen concentration camp—where he indulged his penchant for torture and improvised surgery. Roan initially attempts to deflect Skottie’s questions, but by the end of their conversation he has revealed an outline of his mission, and Skottie, fearing he may also intend retribution, alerts the sheriff of the county Roan is headed to. Skottie has problems of her own: She’s living with her mother and her daughter is acting up in school, but she can’t get Roan out of her mind. Eventually she trails after him, and the two become uneasy allies. Bormann has become Rudy Goodman, and his progress through the years is presented in flashback chapters. At first a rancher and family man, he is struck by lightning and, believing or pretending to believe he has powers, buys a derelict church and establishes a Nazi-like cult. By the beginning of the novel he is, at 94, a political and economic power in his corner of Kansas, and he defends his place vigorously. While Skottie is a believable and sympathetic character, both Roan and Bormann/Goodman are extreme examples of their types. Roan is calm, intellectual, unfailingly polite and correct, and seems at times omniscient, while Bormann is the very model of cruel sadism and belief in his own racial superiority, and despite his age, he manages to continue his grisly hobby. Grecian’s narrative also overindulges a bit in its presentation of the varieties of Nazi wickedness, as if every imaginable outrage needed to be included.
A solid if unsurprising thriller in need of some restraint.Pub Date: April 17, 2018
ISBN: 978-0-399-17611-1
Page Count: 400
Publisher: Putnam
Review Posted Online: Feb. 5, 2018
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 15, 2018
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
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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