The creator of Burke, all-purpose noir stylist Vachss (Mortal Lock, 2013, etc.) launches a new series featuring a freelance investigator who could give Dirty Harry a run for his money.
Adelbert B. Jackson is a soldier of fortune who got his training with the French Foreign Legion. His wife, Dolly, is a nurse who served with Doctors without Borders. After all the traumatic experiences they’ve lived through, they figure it’s time to settle down in a peaceful Oregon town. Their repose is over, however, the day star athlete MaryLou McCoy walks into her high school and empties her father’s .22 revolver into a group of fellow students, killing Cameron Taft. Although MaryLou doesn’t deny the stories of the eyewitnesses and refuses to say anything in elaboration when the police question her, Dell and Dolly swiftly convince themselves that there’s more to her story. In the first of many highhanded moves, Dell offers Bradley L. Swift, MaryLou’s court-appointed attorney, a $25,000 retainer to defend her, guaranteeing Dell a great deal of control over the case—beginning with a letter that appoints Dell Swift’s official investigator. Meantime, Dolly swings into action networking with MaryLou’s schoolmates and ferreting out leads and contacts. The dirt they dig up on the local justice system, the culture of the school and the Tiger Ko Khai Society, which Cam headed, is utterly unsurprising. And there’s all the posturing and swaggering you’d expect from Vachss, especially when he’s launching a new hero who wants you to know that he’s a lot tougher than you. But the closing courtroom scenes serve as a powerful reminder that the practice of law is at heart a blood sport.
Overlong, repetitive and more testosterone-charged than it needs to be. But Vachss’ followers will devour it and will keep watch for Dell and Dolly’s return.Pub Date: June 11, 2013
ISBN: 978-0-307-90774-5
Page Count: 368
Publisher: Pantheon
Review Posted Online: June 3, 2013
Kirkus Reviews Issue: June 15, 2013
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PROFILES
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. 23, 2019
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 15, 2020
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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 22, 2015
Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 15, 2015
Categories: GENERAL MYSTERY & DETECTIVE | MYSTERY & DETECTIVE
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