Lancet hits a few bumps the second time around, but his series remains highly distinctive.
Tokyo-based PI and antiques dealer Jim Brodie, introduced in Japantown (2013), is targeted by a lethal gang for investigating the brutal home-invasion murder of two elderly men and their families.
A one-time fellow soldier of the slain men, feisty 96-year-old Akira Miura is certain the killings were acts of reprisal. In the years before World War II, when Japan occupied China, Miura's company there shot prisoners to "entertain" their superiors. Now, he insists, the deadly Chinese Triad gangs are out to avenge those crimes. It isn't long before Brodie is defending himself, or trying to, against trained attackers with blades and bamboo weapons. Through the underground Chinese contacts provided by his ambitious female police partner, Rie—a romantic attraction who is indignant over his efforts to protect her—he discovers that a mysterious Japanese crime ring is responsible for the killings, not the Triad. The ultrarare paintings of a Japanese monk a London collector has asked him to find may be at the heart of the mystery. And if all of this isn't enough to worry about, Brodie, whose wife was murdered, must also keep his young daughter safe. His enemies are well-aware of her existence. Though the novel gets off to a crisp start, boasting surefire characters including the taciturn, thick-chested chief detective Noda and a notorious crime figure called TNT who owes Brodie favors, things never rise to the level of excitement or surprise of Japantown. The historical material slows things down. The confrontations lack the cool menace of the ones in the first book. And as serviceable as Barbados is for the climax, the particulars of Brodie's concept all but demand a return to San Francisco, the other town in which he operates.
Lancet hits a few bumps the second time around, but his series remains highly distinctive.Pub Date: Sept. 9, 2014
ISBN: 978-1-4516-9172-6
Page Count: 304
Publisher: Simon & Schuster
Review Posted Online: Aug. 27, 2014
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 15, 2014
More of a western than a mystery, like most of Joe’s adventures, and all the better for the open physical clashes that...
Wyoming Game and Fish Warden Joe Pickett (Free Fire, 2007, etc.), once again at the governor’s behest, stalks the wraithlike figure who’s targeting elk hunters for death.
Frank Urman was taken down by a single rifle shot, field-dressed, beheaded and hung upside-down to bleed out. (You won’t believe where his head eventually turns up.) The poker chip found near his body confirms that he’s the third victim of the Wolverine, a killer whose animus against hunters is evidently being whipped up by anti-hunting activist Klamath Moore. The potential effects on the state’s hunting revenues are so calamitous that Governor Spencer Rulon pulls out all the stops, and Pickett is forced to work directly with Wyoming Game and Fish Director Randy Pope, the boss who fired him from his regular job in Saddlestring District. Three more victims will die in rapid succession before Joe is given a more congenial colleague: Nate Romanowski, the outlaw falconer who pledged to protect Joe’s family before he was taken into federal custody. As usual in this acclaimed series, the mystery is slight and its solution eminently guessable long before it’s confirmed by testimony from an unlikely source. But the people and scenes and enduring conflicts that lead up to that solution will stick with you for a long time.
More of a western than a mystery, like most of Joe’s adventures, and all the better for the open physical clashes that periodically release the tension between the scheming adversaries.Pub Date: May 20, 2008
ISBN: 978-0-399-15488-1
Page Count: 320
Publisher: Putnam
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 15, 2008
Chavez delivers a fraught if flawed page-turner that attempts too many twists.
A good Samaritan incurs a psychopath’s wrath in this debut thriller.
Veterinarian Cassie Larkin is heading home after a 12-hour shift when someone darts in front of her car, causing her to dump her energy drink. As she pulls over to mop up the mess, her headlights illuminate a couple having a physical altercation. Cassie calls 911, but before help arrives, the man tosses the woman down an embankment. Ignoring the dispatcher’s instructions, Cassie exits the vehicle and intervenes, preventing the now-unconscious woman’s murder. With sirens wailing in the distance, the man warns Cassie: “Let her die, and I’ll let you live.” He then scrambles back to the road and flees in Cassie’s van. Using mug shots, Cassie identifies the thief and would-be killer as Carver Sweet, who is wanted for poisoning his wife. The Santa Rosa police assure Cassie of her safety, but the next evening, her husband, Sam, vanishes while trick-or-treating with their 6-year-old daughter, Audrey. Hours later, he sends texts apologizing and confessing to an affair, but although it’s true that Sam and Cassie have been fighting, she suspects foul play—particularly given the previous night’s events. Cassie files a report with the cops, but they dismiss her concerns, leaving Cassie to investigate on her own. After a convoluted start, Chavez embarks on a paranoia-fueled thrill ride, escalating the stakes while exploiting readers’ darkest domestic fears. The far-fetched plot lacks cohesion and relies too heavily on coincidence to be fully satisfying, but the reader will be invested in learning the Larkin family’s fate through to the too-pat conclusion.
Chavez delivers a fraught if flawed page-turner that attempts too many twists.Pub Date: Feb. 18, 2020
ISBN: 978-0-06-293617-2
Page Count: 320
Publisher: Morrow/HarperCollins
Review Posted Online: Nov. 24, 2019
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Dec. 15, 2019
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