An investigator who’s an acquired taste softens during this intense thriller.
A fledgling detective discovers the hard way that being overconfident could land her in deep trouble in this engrossing mystery.
Author Diamond’s investigator is Claire Chastain, back for a second outing following The Friday Cage (2020). Claire formerly examined hidden risks for corporate buyouts, a dull sort of detective work. But after the traumatizing events of the first volume, she is taking criminal justice courses at American University. Now, she’s game for something more challenging. Well, be careful what you wish for. Claire receives a call from appliance magnate Roscoe Lehmann, who has a case for her, though she’s not yet a licensed PI. He wants her to check out Jacob Reisman, a squirrelly employee who might be stealing. Posing as an insurance investigator, Claire soon determines that Jacob is far too nervous to be a thief. Doing the proper legwork, Claire even visits Jacob at his apartment. When he’s brutally murdered, Claire becomes a suspect, with a security camera capturing an image of a woman who looks like Claire around the time of the crime. She had ignored her doubts about the case, and now she is framed as a result. Ignoring the sensible advice of her attorney, Anton Durant, Claire stubbornly sets out to prove her innocence. As Anton notes throughout, Claire suffers from “resting bitch face,” which makes her appear guilty despite being innocent. She came by her demeanor honestly; her overbearing grandmother taught her to distrust everybody. Perhaps she can learn to trust a bit more? While the novel does have likable supporting characters, like Anton and the victim, the narrative is primarily a battle of wits between Claire and the real killer, who set her up. The action swiftly moves along as Claire races around the country following leads, too impatient to wait for Anton’s investigator and the police to clear her. The real question that remains is what has the hotheaded detective learned that will serve her better down the road.
An investigator who’s an acquired taste softens during this intense thriller.Pub Date: Nov. 6, 2021
ISBN: 978-1-73413-924-2
Page Count: 286
Publisher: Stolen Time Press
Review Posted Online: Oct. 29, 2021
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
As the prosecutor sadly observes: “All this because of a dead buffalo.”
Idyllic Catalina Island turns out to be just as crime infested as the rest of Los Angeles County in the latest series launch by the creator of Harry Bosch, Renée Ballard, and the Lincoln Lawyer.
Det. Sgt. Stilwell has been bounced off the county homicide squad and rusticized to Catalina, where the exclusive Black Marlin Club won’t admit even four-term Avalon Mayor Doug Allen to full membership and the most serious infraction seems to be the killing and cutting up of a buffalo, presumably by Henry Gaston, who operates Island Mystery Tours when he’s not threatening endangered species. All that changes with the discovery of a body sunk in the surrounding waters. The corpse, most recognizable by its streak of purple hair, is that of Leigh-Anne Moss, a Black Marlin server recently fired for fraternizing with members and guests she sees as potential sugar daddies. Stilwell is sufficiently invested in her murder to compete vigorously over jurisdiction with Rex Ahearn, the LA County homicide detective who kept his job when Stilwell lost his. Their rivalry, fueled by mutual contempt, is only the first hint that Stilwell will end up fighting his counterparts in law enforcement and local government at least as hard as he fights crooks like hit man Merris Spivak and Oscar “Baby Head” Terranova, Henry’s boss, who comes under sharper scrutiny when Henry disappears and ends up dead himself. Connelly handles his hero’s obligatory romance with assistant harbormaster Tash Dano and his increasingly wary alliance with assistant D.A. Monika Juarez with equal professionalism, and if the wrap-up leaves some loose ends dangling, well, that’s what franchises are for.
As the prosecutor sadly observes: “All this because of a dead buffalo.”Pub Date: May 20, 2025
ISBN: 9780316588485
Page Count: 352
Publisher: Little, Brown
Review Posted Online: April 19, 2025
Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 15, 2025
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
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