An amusing yet often disorienting crime tale with a flair for the ridiculous.
A novel focuses on strange events in a wacky Arizona town.
As the features editor of Casa Grande’s Daily Post, Ray Canin is accustomed to the challenges of producing local stories. But when Michael Coleson, the usual crime reporter, suffers a stroke, Ray must cover his beat amid a series of bizarre attacks. A local bureaucrat, a nitpicker responsible for the city code, is found dead in the desert, with his ears, nose, and tongue sliced off. An older man has attempted to rape multiple women while claiming to be the Native American deity Kokopelli. The body of an animal lover is discovered with a feather supposedly from Kokopelli’s headdress on her. Interwoven with these crimes are Ray’s feature subjects—a vast sanctuary for peccaries called Rancho Javelina; a woman intent on founding a community for cats; and a man who is committed to pogo-sticking across the country. At just under 200 pages, Coates’ book is a whirlwind affair. The work’s fast pace and myriad twists, fueled by a vast cast, are at once thrilling and perplexing. Ray’s narration is snappy, comic, and occasionally macabre. The author’s knack for delivering illustrative details comes through in Ray’s vivid observations, as when “rain came down with the subtlety of a two-year-old with a hammer.” He’s a journalist-turned–film-noir-detective faced with ludicrous circumstances. But the piling on of these events will quickly confuse the audience, requiring all but the most attentive readers to frequently refresh their memories of Coates’ characters. In addition, the author falters in his depiction of Franklin Jackson, a “Heart of Africa black” man and the only character whose race is mentioned. Homeless yet highly educated, Jackson provides Ray with street intelligence. But Ray frequently suggests that Jackson is not truly homeless and that his condition is part of an academic study and a ruse to evade the attention of Casa Grande’s white residents. While Coates tries to humorously incorporate this quirky character into the novel, his attempt unintentionally minimizes the challenges of living unhoused in a racist society. Jackson is a minor character yet in a story with so many players, the author would have been wise to treat each one with greater care.
An amusing yet often disorienting crime tale with a flair for the ridiculous.Pub Date: April 21, 2019
ISBN: 978-1-09-328674-8
Page Count: 199
Publisher: Self
Review Posted Online: June 3, 2020
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
Forget about solving all these crimes; the signal triumph here is (spoiler) the heroine’s survival.
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. 22, 2019
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 15, 2020
Don’t feel that your current news feed is disturbing enough? Penny has just what you need.
A sequel to The Grey Wolf (2024) that begins with the earlier novel’s last line: “We have a problem.” And what a problem it is.
Now that Chief Inspector Armand Gamache and his allies in and out of the Sûreté du Québec have saved Canada’s water supply from poisoning on a grand scale, you might think they were entitled to some rest and relaxation in Three Pines. No such luck. Don Joseph Moretti, the Sixth Family head who ordered the hit-and-run on biologist Charles Langlois that nearly killed Gamache as well, is plotting still more criminal enterprises, and Gamache can’t be sure that Chief Inspector Evelyn Tardiff, who’s been cozying up to Moretti in order to get the goods on him, hasn’t gone over to the dark side herself. In fact, Gamache’s uncertainty about Evelyn sets the pattern for much of what follows, for another review of one of Langlois’ notebooks reveals a plot so monstrous that it’s impossible to be sure who’s not in on it. Is it really true, as paranoid online rumors have it, that “Canada is about to attack the U.S.”? Or is it really the other way around, as the discovery of War Plan Red would have it? As the threats loom larger and larger, they raise questions as to whether the Black Wolf, the evil power behind them, is Moretti, disgraced former Deputy Prime Minister Marcus Lauzon, whom Gamache has arranged to have released from prison, or someone even more highly placed. A brief introductory note dating Penny’s delivery of the uncannily prophetic manuscript to September 2024 will do little to assuage the anxieties of concerned readers.
Don’t feel that your current news feed is disturbing enough? Penny has just what you need.Pub Date: Oct. 28, 2025
ISBN: 9781250328175
Page Count: 384
Publisher: Minotaur
Review Posted Online: July 17, 2025
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 15, 2025
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