Proficient but routine work.
Two brand-new novellas and two reprinted short stories test the semiretired Nameless Detective’s ability to close cases—and the gentle reader’s taste for new wine in old bottles.
The two brief reprints both involve serendipitous discoveries. In “Grapplin’,” Nameless (Vixen, 2015, etc.), who’s signed on to help a long-estranged uncle search for his missing niece, is surprised to solve a 50-year-old double murder along the way. The even shorter “Nightscape” finds Nameless and his operative Jake Runyon sitting in a diner hoping to catch the scent of a deadbeat dad and ends with their bagging “two violent, abusive fathers in the space of about three minutes.” The title novella follows an even curvier path. Nameless, working a rare case himself out in Rio Verdi, begins by collecting statements from witnesses to an auto accident involving San Francisco businessman Arthur Clements, then takes a macabre turn when his search for one more witness leads him to the bodies of two men who’ve apparently shot each other in an argument over drugs. Newly widowed Doreen Fentress, convinced that her Ray wasn’t that kind of man, hires Nameless to find out the truth about him, and to her sorrow, that’s exactly what he does. The client in “Revenant,” suburban stockbroker Peter Erskine, is literally spooked by the effects of another car crash. Elza Vok, the Lithuanian Satanist who plowed into Erskine’s car, cursed him on his deathbed, and now Erskine and his ailing wife, Marian, are both convinced that an evil spirit has assumed Vok’s physical form to haunt them. Pronzini tries to end on the same ambivalent note as John Dickson Carr’s classic novel The Burning Court but doesn’t quite pull it off.
Proficient but routine work.Pub Date: May 17, 2016
ISBN: 978-0-7653-8103-3
Page Count: 272
Publisher: Forge
Review Posted Online: Feb. 28, 2016
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 15, 2016
It's clearly Cat’s meow, and if you respond positively to her tempestuous carryings-on, then you'll probably forgive Iles...
A serial killer who puts the bite on victims is the villainous center of a long, long psychothriller, as southern Gothic as it gets.
Dr. Catherine (Cat) Ferry is a forensic odontologist, which is to say “an expert on human teeth and the damage they can do.” In four cases enlivening the New Orleans crime scene, however, the damage done is mostly posthumous, the victims having been snuffed first, gnawed on afterward. Cat loves being called in to help NOPD investigations. She also loves a hunky homicide detective named Sean Regan. At some point, Sean says, he will leave his wife and kids for her, but it’s a point of diminishing probability. Hard to really blame Sean, feckless as he is, since Cat’s not only bipolar, alcoholic and promiscuous but also apparently content to remain that way. And then, leaning over the chewed-upon corpse of Arthur LeGendre, she has a panic attack that amounts to an epiphany. Something’s wrong, she intuits, and makes a beeline for home in Natchez, Miss. Somehow, she has sensed a connection between the New Orleans murders and dark doings in her own past. Twenty years ago, when Cat was eight, her daddy was shot to death. A mysterious assailant, grandpapa Kirkland has insisted through the years, but Cat has always found that difficult to accept. Now, in her old bedroom in the family manse, she unexpectedly discovers forensic evidence that supports her skepticism—and discovers as well gleanings of a terrible secret. In the meantime, back in New Orleans, the investigation has heated up, and here too it seems Cat had it right. Murder in New Orleans and murder in Natchez are connected by the same kind of terrible secret.
It's clearly Cat’s meow, and if you respond positively to her tempestuous carryings-on, then you'll probably forgive Iles (The Footprints of God, 2003, etc.) his unabashed quest for bestsellerdom.Pub Date: Feb. 15, 2005
ISBN: 0-7432-3470-7
Page Count: 512
Publisher: Scribner
Review Posted Online: June 24, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 1, 2005
The racism, classism, and sexism of 50 years ago wrapped up in a stylish, sexy, suspenseful period drama about a newsroom...
Baltimore in the 1960s is the setting for this historical fiction about a real-life unsolved drowning.
In her most ambitious work to date, Lippman (Sunburn, 2018, etc.) tells the story of Maddie Schwartz, an attractive 37-year-old Jewish housewife who abruptly leaves her husband and son to pursue a long-held ambition to be a journalist, and Cleo Sherwood, an African-American cocktail waitress about whom little is known. Sherwood's body was found in a lake in a city park months after she disappeared, and while no one else seems to care enough to investigate, Maddie becomes obsessed—partly due to certain similarities she perceives between her life and Cleo's, partly due to her faith in her own detective skills. The story unfolds from Maddie's point of view as well as that of Cleo's ghost, who seems to be watching from behind the scenes, commenting acerbically on Maddie's nosing around like a bull in a china shop after getting a job at one of the city papers. Added to these are a chorus of Baltimore characters who make vivid one-time appearances: a jewelry store clerk, an about-to-be-murdered schoolgirl, "Mr. Helpline," a bartender, a political operative, a waitress, a Baltimore Oriole, the first African-American female policewoman (these last two are based on real people), and many more. Maddie's ambition propels her forward despite the cost to others, including the family of the deceased and her own secret lover, a black policeman. Lippman's high-def depiction of 1960s Baltimore and the atmosphere of the newsroom at that time—she interviewed associates of her father, Baltimore Sun journalist Theo Lippman Jr., for the details—ground the book in fascinating historical fact.The literary gambit she balances atop that foundation—the collage of voices—works impressively, showcasing the author's gift for rhythms of speech. The story is bigger than the crime, and the crime is bigger than its solution, making Lippman's skill as a mystery novelist work as icing on the cake.
The racism, classism, and sexism of 50 years ago wrapped up in a stylish, sexy, suspenseful period drama about a newsroom and the city it covers.Pub Date: July 23, 2019
ISBN: 978-0-06-239001-1
Page Count: 352
Publisher: Morrow/HarperCollins
Review Posted Online: March 30, 2019
Kirkus Reviews Issue: April 15, 2019
BOOK TO SCREEN
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