SHALLOW GRAVE

Name: SHALLOW GRAVE
Author: Brian Thiem
ISBN: 978-1-68331-143-0

by Brian Thiem ‧ RELEASE DATE: July 11, 2017

Part sequel, part remake of the hero’s last case. It will be a distinct pleasure to see him move on to fresh targets next...

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Oakland PD Sgt. Matt Sinclair’s third case awakens painful, and painfully specific, memories of his second.

After he’s labored in vain (Thrill Kill, 2016, etc.) to link Councilman Preston Yates and power-broker industrialist Sergio Kozlov to the murder of prostitute Dawn Gustafson, Yates’ pregnant mistress, it’s something of a relief when Sinclair is asked to deal with a much more routine crime: the death of Shane Gibbs, a member of the Savage Simba gang who was reportedly shot at the Iron Horse Bar by Reggie "Animal" Clement. Sure, Animal’s lawyered up, but everybody knows who did the deed, and it’s only a matter of time before Oakland’s finest wear him down. A second corpse, however, darkens the case considerably, and not only because it’s the body of Sgt. Phil Roberts, Sinclair’s old mentor and ex-partner. Roberts, ditched in a shallow grave, was shot, then suffocated, and the prints on the trash bag containing his remains are quickly traced to Shane Gibbs. Case closed, announces Police Chief Clarence Brown, but Sinclair’s not having any of it. The fact that one of Animal’s private-security clients was Maureen Yates convinced him that he can tie Sinclair’s death to her husband, even after he’s warned to leave the councilman alone and then, when he doesn’t, asked for his badge and gun. Sinclair’s FBI buddy, Upton Bellamy, offers to reinstate him as an acting U.S. deputy marshal, but Sinclair would rather go it on his own. In the process he finds that Preston Yates is indeed involved this time too—and that Roberts was keeping some dark secrets from his old friend.

Part sequel, part remake of the hero’s last case. It will be a distinct pleasure to see him move on to fresh targets next time.

Pub Date: July 11, 2017

ISBN: 978-1-68331-143-0

Page Count: 336

Publisher: Crooked Lane

Review Posted Online: May 1, 2017

Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 15, 2017

Categories:

MYSTERY & DETECTIVE | THRILLER | POLICE PROCEDURALS

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A CONSPIRACY OF BONES

by Kathy Reichs ‧ RELEASE DATE: March 17, 2020

Forget about solving all these crimes; the signal triumph here is (spoiler) the heroine’s survival.

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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. 22, 2019

Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 15, 2020

Categories:

- BOOK REVIEW
COLD, COLD BONES
by Kathy Reichs

- BOOK REVIEW
THE BONE CODE
by Kathy Reichs

- BOOK REVIEW
TWO NIGHTS
by Kathy Reichs

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THE WINNER

by David Baldacci ‧ RELEASE DATE: Dec. 2, 1997

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Irritatingly trite woman-in-periler from lawyer-turned-novelist Baldacci. Moving away from the White House and the white-shoe Washington law firms of his previous bestsellers (Absolute Power, 1996; Total Control, 1997), Baldacci comes up with LuAnn Tyler, a spunky, impossibly beautiful, white-trash truck stop waitress with a no-good husband and a terminally cute infant daughter in tow. Some months after the birth of Lisa, LuAnn gets a phone call summoning her to a make-shift office in an unrented storefront of the local shopping mall. There, she gets a Faustian offer from a Mr. Jackson, a monomaniacal, cross-dressing manipulator who apparently knows the winning numbers in the national lottery before the numbers are drawn. It seems that LuAnn fits the media profile of what a lottery winner should be—poor, undereducated but proud—and if she's willing to buy the right ticket at the right time and transfer most of her winnings to Jackson, she'll be able to retire in luxury. Jackson fails to inform her, however, that if she refuses his offer, he'll have her killed. Before that can happen, as luck would have it, LuAnn barely escapes death when one of husband Duane's drug deals goes bad. She hops on a first-class Amtrak sleeper to Manhattan with a hired executioner in pursuit. But executioner Charlie, one of Jackson's paid handlers, can't help but hear wedding bells when he sees LuAnn cooing with her daughter. Alas, a winning $100- million lottery drawing complicates things. Jackson spirits LuAnn and Lisa away to Sweden, with Charlie in pursuit. Never fear. Not only will LuAnn escape a series of increasingly violent predicaments, but she'll also outwit Jackson, pay an enormous tax bill to the IRS, and have enough left over to honeymoon in Switzerland. Too preposterous to work as feminine wish-fulfillment, too formulaic to be suspenseful. (Book-of-the-Month Club main selection)