Perennial best-selling author Perry (A Sunless Sea, 2012, etc.) once again shows why her work resonates with readers in this short Christmas story that doesn’t rely on all of the usual yuletide tricks to make it sing.
Victor Narraway serves with the British army in 1857 war-torn India. Going into the service wasn’t his idea, though; his father decided it would turn him into a man. Young Narraway now wears the insignia of lieutenant in a troubled country ruled by the British Empire. Recent uprisings among the Indian people have resulted in the deaths of thousands of Englishmen and their families, and the escape of a prisoner led to the tragic ambush of a patrol. It’s that escape and patrol that now occupy Narraway, even though he wasn’t even part of the garrison when the attack took place. His senior officer, Col. Latimer, who will preside over the court martial of a suspect in the case, has appointed him to represent the soldier, a medical orderly named John Tallis, who stands accused of conspiring with an Indian traitor to facilitate his escape and the targeting of the patrol. Narraway is only given a couple of days to prepare for the trial, which he understands he will lose: Tallis is the only soldier who cannot be accounted for during the time that the escape took place. But when Narraway visits with Tallis, he is struck by how much he likes the forlorn and ultimately doomed medical orderly and believes he is innocent of the crime. With little hope of saving the man before the onset of Christmas, Narraway sets out to prove his innocence and surprises even himself with his resourcefulness. Perry avoids all of the mawkish pitfalls that are usually the hallmark of holiday books by choosing an unconventional setting and decidedly different approach. Rather than leaning on sentiment, she writes an honest, though somewhat grim, story that captures the essence of 19th-century India and the character of a compassionate man.
A novel approach to an oft-explored subject, this tale will delight Perry’s fans and bring her new ones.Pub Date: Oct. 30, 2012
ISBN: 978-0-345-53074-5
Page Count: 176
Publisher: Ballantine
Review Posted Online: Sept. 16, 2012
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Oct. 1, 2012
Categories: GENERAL MYSTERY & DETECTIVE | MYSTERY & DETECTIVE | HISTORICAL MYSTERY
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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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