Amerasian private detective Rick Van Lam is hired to look into the deaths of beautiful Vietnamese twins.
Hank Nguyen, a distant relative of the twins, once despised Rick, the teacher of his criminal justice class, for being half-white. But now Rick is his mentor as he goes through the Connecticut State Police Academy. Mary Le Vu was the poor sister who hardly ever left her East Hartford neighborhood or her husband Benny’s failing grocery in Little Saigon. When she’s killed in a drive-by shooting in a dangerous area, the police put it down to bad luck, until the same thing happens to her wealthy sister, Molly Le Torcelli. Hank’s status as a relative gives Rick a chance to talk to all the family members, rich, poor and dysfunctional. The twins’ four children and the maid’s son were all sent to expensive private schools with varying results. Mary’s son, Tommy, a rebel who dropped out after being caught smoking pot, survives on menial jobs. His sister, Cindy, who’s bright but not a beauty like her mother, compensates by wearing loud clothes and clownlike makeup. The children of Larry Torcelli, a wealthy man with several car dealerships who paid for the children’s educations, are Yale grad and perennial student Jon and his gorgeous, dim-bulb younger sister, Kristen. The odd man out is handsome, brilliant, ambitious Danny Trinh, the son of Susie, the maid. Larry’s favorite, he has a good job with a large bank. Rick gathers information on this brood with the help of his ex-wife, Liz Sanburn, a police psychologist, and his partner, Jimmy Gadowicz. Together they try to figure out which of the usual motives—money, drugs, love—is behind the two murders.
The first entry in a planned series features a complex detective whose background as an Amerasian orphan born in Vietnam profoundly influences everything he does.Pub Date: Nov. 4, 2014
ISBN: 978-1-4642-0330-5
Page Count: 290
Publisher: Poisoned Pen
Review Posted Online: Sept. 30, 2014
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Oct. 15, 2014
Categories: MYSTERY & DETECTIVE | DETECTIVES & PRIVATE INVESTIGATORS
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FBI Special Agent Aloysius Pendergast finds evil afoot in his latest action-filled adventure (Verses for the Dead, 2018, etc.).
Imagine Florida beachcombers’ shock when they discover a shoe with a severed foot inside. Soon they see dozens more feet, all in identical shoes, bobbing toward the beach. Police and FBI ultimately count more than a hundred of them washing up on Sanibel and Captiva Islands' tranquil shores. Pendergast teams up with the junior Special Agent Armstrong Coldmoon to investigate this strange phenomenon. Oceanographers use a supercomputer to analyze Gulf currents and attempt to determine where the feet entered the ocean. Were they dumped off a ship or an island? Does each one represent a homicide? Analysts examine chemical residues and pollen, even the angle of each foot’s amputation, but the puzzle defies all explanation. Attention focuses on Cuba, where “something terrible was happening” in front of a coastal prison, and on China, the apparent source of the shoes. The clever plot is “a most baffling case indeed” for the brilliant Pendergast, but it’s the type of problem he thrives on. He’s hardly a stereotypical FBI agent, given for example his lemon-colored silk suit, his Panama hat, and his legendary insistence on working alone—until now. Pendergast rarely blinks—perhaps, someone surmises, he’s part reptile. But equally odd is Constance Greene, his “extraordinarily beautiful,” smart, and sarcastic young “ward” who has “eyes that had seen everything and, as a result, were surprised by nothing.” Coldmoon is more down to earth: part Lakota, part Italian, and “every inch a Fed.” Add in murderous drug dealers, an intrepid newspaper reporter, coyotes crossing the U.S.–Mexico border, and a pissed-off wannabe graphic novelist, and you have a thoroughly entertaining cast of characters. There is plenty of suspense, and the action gets bloody.
Great storytelling, a quirky hero, and a quirkier plot make this a winner for adventure fans.Pub Date: Feb. 4, 2020
ISBN: 978-1-5387-4725-4
Page Count: 368
Publisher: Grand Central Publishing
Review Posted Online: Jan. 13, 2020
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 1, 2020
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Lucas Davenport goes west.
But first he goes south, called from his home in Minnesota to the Louisiana swamp where hired killer Clayton Deese buried at least five people (the total is actually higher) before coming a cropper seven months ago with his latest target, Howell Paine. Things went sideways, sending Paine to the hospital and sentencing Deese to an ankle monitor he sliced through three days ago. Local FBI agent Sandro Tremanty, discovering Deese’s absence, wants help from the U.S. marshals in rounding up his quarry so that he can implicate loan shark Roger Smith, who’d hired him to hurt Paine and send a warning to his other debtors. And there’s another reason the feds would like to get Deese off the streets: His experiments in homicide have given him a taste for human flesh. Soon enough, Lucas, together with marshals Rae Givens and Bob Matees, has picked up Deese’s trail, which leads first to Marina Del Rey, where he’s joined his half brother, Marion Beauchamps, and Jayden Nast, “a guy with guns, who hates cops,” in a brutal home-invasion crew. Conscientious detective work brings Lucas and the LAPD within a whisker of catching Deese, but he slips away from them and heads to Las Vegas with Genesis Cox, the blonde he’s picked up, and John Rogers Cole, another accomplice. Deese and his cohort must constantly pull new jobs to support their gambling and drug habits, and it’s hard to imagine their eluding the law for very long. But there are deeper threats to their racket. Roger Smith, who knows plenty about Deese, realizes he has every reason to get rid of him, and there turns out to be no honor among the thieves closer to home either.
Professionally entertaining, with lots of realistically frustrating false hopes—though it’s hard to worry very much about the leading question here: Will the franchise hero (Twisted Prey, 2018, etc.) succeed in bringing the crooks to justice before they wipe each other off the face of the Earth?Pub Date: April 13, 2019
ISBN: 978-0-525-53658-1
Page Count: 400
Publisher: Putnam
Review Posted Online: Feb. 17, 2019
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 1, 2019
Categories: MYSTERY & DETECTIVE | SUSPENSE | SUSPENSE
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