Wild-country noir with gripping, compelling action.
Paul (Double Edge Sword, 2009) makes his fiction debut with a tale of greed and violence set in California’s Sierra Nevada.
It’s spring. Tom Smith and Lester Wendover, saddle buddies and guides for high-country horseback expeditions, are up along a mountain trail clearing avalanche debris. In the morning light, Tom spies aircraft wreckage above the timberline. The two climb to investigate, discovering the pilot’s body, "more like a mummy than a corpse...like something out of an old National Geographic, a photograph of...that Bronze Age guy who took an arrow up in the Alps." It’s the body of a monthslong-missing billionaire adventurer, with a trophy wife wanting him declared dead and a wastrel son preferring the billionaire’s new will not be filed. Tom served two tours in Iraq as a sniper. Lester is the proverbial good ol’ boy. Without Tom noticing, Lester impulsively strips a Rolex and cash from the wreckage. Later, when Tom learns what Lester has done, he realizes they can't report finding the wreck without being crucified by the law and the media as "body robbers," even though Deputy Sarah Cathcart might have the hots for him. He demands they trek back up to the crash site and replace the purloined items. They do, only to find the corpse missing, replaced by a forged note indicating the pilot survived. In the meantime, Lester and Callie, his good-time girlfriend, have contacted both the trophy wife and the son, Gerald Q, who's immersed in the Miami gangster lifestyle. That brings lawyers from Los Angeles and drug-smuggling Cubanos to the high Sierras. Tom’s trusty .270 Remington deer rifle and Leupold scope solve problems for several Miami gunmen before Gerald Q’s fake suicide becomes the drug lord’s alibi. Paul writes with spare, clean, hard-driving prose that skates along morality's knife-edge—writing reminiscent of Cormac McCarthy and James Lee Burke—all the while layered with lush, keenly observed descriptions of the natural world and man’s place in it.
Wild-country noir with gripping, compelling action.Pub Date: April 1, 2013
ISBN: 978-1-61145-836-7
Page Count: 288
Publisher: Arcade
Review Posted Online: Feb. 2, 2013
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 15, 2013
A Gone Girl–esque confection with villainy and melodrama galore.
A wealthy woman with a handsome husband is preyed on by a ruthless con artist.
One day at the gym, Amber Patterson drops the magazine she’s reading between her exercise bike and that of the woman who happens to be beside her, Daphne Parrish. As she bends to pick it up, Daphne notices that it’s the publication of a cystic fibrosis foundation. What a coincidence—Daphne’s sister died of cystic fibrosis, and, why, so did Amber’s! “Slowing her pace, Amber wiped her eyes with the back of her hand. It took a lot of acting skills to cry about a sister who never existed.” Step one complete. “All she needed from Daphne was everything.” Everything, in this case, consists of Daphne’s outlandishly wealthy and blisteringly hot husband, Jackson, and all the real estate that comes with him; Daphne can definitely keep her two whiny brats. Amber hates children. But once she finds out that Daphne’s failure to give Jackson a male heir is the main source of tension in the marriage, she sees exactly how to make this work. Amber’s constant, spiteful inner monologue as she plays up to Daphne is the best thing about this book. For example, as Daphne talks about the many miseries her sister Julie went through before her death, Amber is thinking, “At least Julie had grown up in a nice house with money and parents who cared about her. Okay, she was sick and then she died. So what? A lot of people were sick. A lot of people died.…How about Amber and what she’d gone through?” Meanwhile, poor, stupid Daphne is so caught up in the joy of finally having a friend, she seems to be handing Jackson to her on a platter. Constantine’s debut novel is the work of two sisters in collaboration, and these ladies definitely know the formula.
A Gone Girl–esque confection with villainy and melodrama galore.Pub Date: Oct. 17, 2017
ISBN: 978-0-06-266757-1
Page Count: 400
Publisher: Harper/HarperCollins
Review Posted Online: Aug. 2, 2017
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 15, 2017
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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