Characters you immediately care for fight Covid and killers in exciting adventures touching on politically sensitive topics.
A fight over wild horses may provide the motive for murder.
The wild horse roundup that Lincoln County, Nevada, Sheriff Porter Beck and his deputy, Tuffy Scruggs, watch is a contentious event pitting horse advocates against ranchers who want every blade of grass on public land to go to their cattle. The use of helicopters to chase the frantic horses into corrals leaves some of the animals injured or dead. The roundup is run by Jolene Manning’s Bureau of Land Management crew, whose rough methods are decried by CANTER, a horse rescue group run by Etta Clay. When the helicopter crashes, Beck and Tuffy discover that the pilot was shot out of the sky. Jolene blames Etta, but Beck is open to other theories. Beck’s dealing with his Pop, the former sheriff, whose dementia is worsening; Covid-19, which is just starting to ravage the area; and his upcoming move to work alongside his girlfriend, state Det. Charlie Blue Horse. Despite his private opinion, Beck doesn’t take sides on the horse roundups, but he has a feeling that the CANTER crowd didn’t kill the pilot, who was having an affair with Jolene. On top of that, Beck’s adopted sister, Brinley Cummings, rescued from a horrendous childhood by Pop, was volunteering with a group dealing with troubled youth and hasn’t returned from following a runaway. When Jolene is buried up to her neck and trampled by wild horses, tensions flare. The FBI suspect Robert Lewis Northrup Jr., who suffers from PTSD. Enter the bosses of a politically sensitive lithium mine whose land impact reports may be false. Beck and his crew have a wild ride tracking down the murderer.
Characters you immediately care for fight Covid and killers in exciting adventures touching on politically sensitive topics.Pub Date: July 8, 2025
ISBN: 9781250373908
Page Count: 368
Publisher: Minotaur
Review Posted Online: May 16, 2025
Kirkus Reviews Issue: June 15, 2025
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
As the prosecutor sadly observes: “All this because of a dead buffalo.”
Idyllic Catalina Island turns out to be just as crime infested as the rest of Los Angeles County in the latest series launch by the creator of Harry Bosch, Renée Ballard, and the Lincoln Lawyer.
Det. Sgt. Stilwell has been bounced off the county homicide squad and rusticized to Catalina, where the exclusive Black Marlin Club won’t admit even four-term Avalon Mayor Doug Allen to full membership and the most serious infraction seems to be the killing and cutting up of a buffalo, presumably by Henry Gaston, who operates Island Mystery Tours when he’s not threatening endangered species. All that changes with the discovery of a body sunk in the surrounding waters. The corpse, most recognizable by its streak of purple hair, is that of Leigh-Anne Moss, a Black Marlin server recently fired for fraternizing with members and guests she sees as potential sugar daddies. Stilwell is sufficiently invested in her murder to compete vigorously over jurisdiction with Rex Ahearn, the LA County homicide detective who kept his job when Stilwell lost his. Their rivalry, fueled by mutual contempt, is only the first hint that Stilwell will end up fighting his counterparts in law enforcement and local government at least as hard as he fights crooks like hit man Merris Spivak and Oscar “Baby Head” Terranova, Henry’s boss, who comes under sharper scrutiny when Henry disappears and ends up dead himself. Connelly handles his hero’s obligatory romance with assistant harbormaster Tash Dano and his increasingly wary alliance with assistant D.A. Monika Juarez with equal professionalism, and if the wrap-up leaves some loose ends dangling, well, that’s what franchises are for.
As the prosecutor sadly observes: “All this because of a dead buffalo.”Pub Date: May 20, 2025
ISBN: 9780316588485
Page Count: 352
Publisher: Little, Brown
Review Posted Online: April 19, 2025
Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 15, 2025
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