A solid crime story with an evocative sense of place.
An unspeakably brutal contemporary murder has roots in the 1950s.
Sheriff Porter Beck, whose jurisdiction is sparsely populated Lincoln County, north of Las Vegas, is called to the scene of a singularly savage crime. Retired FBI agent Ralph Atterbury has been bound to the recliner in his home and systematically tortured. Beck and his team have barely begun their investigation when the FBI storms in, in the person of stylish, no-nonsense Special Agent Sana Locke. Interspersed flashbacks take the story to 1955, when destined lovers Freddie Meyer and Kitty Ellison meet at the newly opened Dunes Hotel and Casino, where they both work. Through a family friend, Kitty helps Freddie get a job at the nearby atomic testing site. The more elaborate third-person prose of these chapters plays nicely against Beck’s more direct first-person narrative. Borgos’ debut is solidly anchored in the lively banter between Beck and Locke, who soon give in to their sexual chemistry. More deaths add urgency to the investigation. The 1950s plot, which centers around nuclear testing and the mysterious Project 57, thickens when the ingenuous Freddie is introduced to Georgiy, a Russian whose malevolence will be instantly apparent to everyone but him. This plotline, though interesting, is more successful as history than mystery. Along the way, this series kickoff introduces Beck’s elderly dad and his team of deputies, Wardell, Pete, and Tuffy, the latter of whom proves the most valuable of the three. A clever plot twist gives the third act a welcome infusion of energy.
A solid crime story with an evocative sense of place.Pub Date: July 18, 2023
ISBN: 9781250848079
Page Count: 320
Publisher: Minotaur
Review Posted Online: April 24, 2023
Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 15, 2023
More like a con than a truly satisfying psychological mystery.
What should be a rare horror—a woman gone missing—becomes a pattern in Kubica's latest thriller.
One night, a young mother goes for a run. She never comes home. A few weeks later, the body of Meredith, another missing woman, is found with a self-inflicted knife wound; the only clue about the fate of her still-missing 6-year-old daughter, Delilah, is a note that reads, "You’ll never find her. Don’t even try." Eleven years later, a girl escapes from a basement where she’s been held captive and severely abused; she reports that she is Delilah. Kubica alternates between chapters in the present narrated by Delilah’s younger brother, Leo, now 15 and resentful of the hold Delilah’s disappearance and Meredith’s death have had on his father, and chapters from 11 years earlier, narrated by Meredith and her neighbor Kate. Meredith begins receiving texts that threaten to expose her and tear her life apart; she struggles to keep them, and her anxiety, from her family as she goes through the motions of teaching yoga and working as a doula. One client in particular worries her; Meredith fears her husband might be abusing her, and she's also unhappy with the way the woman’s obstetrician treats her. So this novel is both a mystery about what led to Meredith’s death and Delilah’s imprisonment and the story of what Delilah's return might mean to her family and all their well-meaning neighbors. Someone is not who they seem; someone has been keeping secrets for 11 long years. The chapters complement one another like a patchwork quilt, slowly revealing the rotten heart of a murderer amid a number of misdirections. The main problem: As it becomes clear whodunit, there’s no true groundwork laid for us to believe that this person would behave at all the way they do.
More like a con than a truly satisfying psychological mystery.Pub Date: May 18, 2021
ISBN: 978-0-778-38944-6
Page Count: 352
Publisher: Park Row Books
Review Posted Online: Feb. 9, 2021
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 1, 2021
High art meets low life in a tale a lot more sympathetic to the latter.
Someone is stalking the streets of Lt. Eve Dallas’s New York, intent on bringing new life to sex workers by snuffing out their old ones.
In 2061, prostitutes are called licensed companions, and that’s Leesa Culver’s job description when she’s accosted by a plausible-looking artist who wants to hire her as a model for the night. Before the night is over, she’s been drugged, strangled, costumed, and posed as an uncanny replica of Vermeer’s Girl With a Pearl Earring. The shock of the crime is deepened by the murder the following night of licensed companion Bobby Ren, whose body is discovered at an art gallery entrance costumed and posed as Gainsborough’s Blue Boy. The killer clearly has an obsessive agenda, a rapid-fire timetable, and access to unlimited financial resources that have allowed him to commission expensive custom-made outfits for the victims. This last detail both marks his power and points to the way Dallas, her gazillionaire husband, Roarke, and her sidekick, Det. Delia Peabody, will track him down by methodically narrowing the field of consumers who’ve purchased the costly costumes. After identifying the guilty party two-thirds of the way through the story, they’ll still face an uphill battle convicting a killer with no conscience, no respect for the law, and a budget that would easily cover the means to jump bail, remove his ankle tracker, and hire a private jet to escape to a foreign land with no extradition treaty. Robb keeps it all consistently absorbing by sweating every procedural detail along with her heroine. Only Dallas’ climactic interrogation of her prisoner is a letdown, because it’s perfectly obvious how she’s going to wangle a confession out of him.
High art meets low life in a tale a lot more sympathetic to the latter.Pub Date: Sept. 2, 2025
ISBN: 9781250370822
Page Count: 368
Publisher: St. Martin's
Review Posted Online: May 16, 2025
Kirkus Reviews Issue: June 15, 2025
© Copyright 2025 Kirkus Media LLC. All Rights Reserved.
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