A bleak but gripping tale of a teen gang running amok.
A Stockholm suburb is being terrorized by a teenage gang's calculated reign of firebombings and burglaries. After a beaten female cop is left to die in the trunk of an abandoned car, DCI Ewert Grens will break all the rules in his effort to nab the perpetrators.
The crime wave, which has residents locking themselves in at night, is being directed from inside a maximum security prison by 18-year-old Leon. He's having his "blood brother" Gabriel's girlfriend, Wanda, regularly smuggle in pills as a mule. The gang, dubbed the Ghetto Soldiers, has no reservations about recruiting 12-year-olds to do its grunt work. Their intense hatred for authority is fueled by the violent mistreatment of their mothers by their fathers, but the moms don't catch much of a break either. Down-in-his-cups Grens, who's not unlike Henning Mankell's Wallander, is haunted by an incident from 20 years ago involving someone connected to one of the teen felons. When Wanda becomes pregnant, the story takes a different turn and Grens' past begins catching up to him. This book is no short haul, containing more than 600 pages of terse narrative and circular digressions. But while the seasoned team of Roslund & Hellstrom (Cell 8, 2011, etc.) is a bit facile in its blueprinting of plot, which involves a perfectly timed string of prison breaks, the authors are great at getting inside the heads of the young criminals. The austerity of their style also gains in existential power as you get into the heart of the story.
A bleak but gripping tale of a teen gang running amok.Pub Date: June 10, 2014
ISBN: 978-1-62365-135-0
Page Count: 352
Publisher: Mobius
Review Posted Online: June 17, 2014
Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 1, 2014
An anodyne visit with Tricia and her friends and enemies hung on a thin mystery.
Too much free time leads a New Hampshire bookseller into yet another case of murder.
Now that Tricia Miles has Pixie Poe and Mr. Everett practically running her bookstore, Haven’t Got a Clue, she finds herself at loose ends. Her wealthy sister, Angelica, who in the guise of Nigela Ricita has invested heavily in making Stoneham a bookish tourist attraction, is entering the amateur competition for the Great Booktown Bake-Off. So Tricia, who’s recently taken up baking as a hobby, decides to join her and spends a lot of time looking for the perfect cupcake recipe. A visit to another bookstore leaves Tricia witnessing a nasty argument between owner Joyce Widman and next-door neighbor Vera Olson over the trimming of tree branches that hang over Joyce’s yard—also overheard by new town police officer Cindy Pearson. After Tricia accepts Joyce’s offer of some produce from her garden, they find Vera skewered by a pitchfork, and when Police Chief Grant Baker arrives, Joyce is his obvious suspect. Ever since Tricia moved to Stoneham, the homicide rate has skyrocketed (Poisoned Pages, 2018, etc.), and her history with Baker is fraught. She’s also become suspicious about the activities at Pets-A-Plenty, the animal shelter where Vera was a dedicated volunteer. Tricia’s offered her expertise to the board, but president Toby Kingston has been less than welcoming. With nothing but baking on her calendar, Tricia has plenty of time to investigate both the murder and her vague suspicions about the shelter. Plenty of small-town friendships and rivalries emerge in her quest for the truth.
An anodyne visit with Tricia and her friends and enemies hung on a thin mystery.Pub Date: Aug. 13, 2019
ISBN: 978-1-9848-0272-9
Page Count: 320
Publisher: Berkley
Review Posted Online: May 26, 2019
Kirkus Reviews Issue: June 15, 2019
A murder is committed in a stalled transcontinental train in the Balkans, and every passenger has a watertight alibi. But Hercule Poirot finds a way.
**Note: This classic Agatha Christie mystery was originally published in England as Murder on the Orient Express, but in the United States as Murder in the Calais Coach. Kirkus reviewed the book in 1934 under the original US title, but we changed the title in our database to the now recognizable title Murder on the Orient Express. This is the only name now known for the book. The reason the US publisher, Dodd Mead, did not use the UK title in 1934 was to avoid confusion with the 1932 Graham Greene novel, Orient Express.
Pub Date: Feb. 28, 1934
ISBN: 978-0062073495
Page Count: -
Publisher: Dodd, Mead
Review Posted Online: Sept. 20, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 1, 1934
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