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SIGNAL TO NOISE

A mildly atmospheric snapshot of San Francisco's techno- publishing scene goes downhill fast when it devolves into a breathless kidnapping/romance. Jim Knight is talented, driven, and terminally stodgy: As the features editor of Signal magazine, he's scornful of interns and a slave to his e-mail. One fateful night when his relentlessly upwardly mobile fiancÇe is out of town, he goes to a scruffy party in hopes of hooking up with a famous novelist whom he wants a favor from. By a complicated chain of events, he ends up back at his own place with a pack of fun-seekers (not his usual gang), which includes 24-year-old Kat, aspiring writer and `zine intern, who's terminally insecure, attractive, and smart. Many drinks later, Jim is off feeling sick somewhere when Kat idly uses his computer to log onto a gambling website, where she proceeds to rack up almost $200,000 in debt. Jim wakes up the next morning tormented by a wicked hangover and baffled by threatening e-mail from the ``casino manager.'' Having little memory of the previous night, he pursues Kat, who shows up at his gig (he's also a jazz musician) the following night, glimpses his artist side—and falls for him. Then some shady characters start chasing the two; Kat's apartment building burns down; Jim finds himself increasingly on the outs at work and with his fiancÇe; and finally, he and Kat are kidnapped by emissaries of the casino, who drive them to a trailer park where they're held captive by an unsavory bunch. Various tepid adventures and quasi-escapes later, Kat's ingenuity springs the pair—though both must change and grow before they can resume their romance. First-novelist/cyber-celeb Sinclair (the nonfiction Net Chick, not reviewed) is engaging when she's sketching the clothes, lunch hangouts, and familiar ambitions of this self-consciously cutting- edge scene. It's the desperate criminals and the heated flirting that induce boredom.

Pub Date: Nov. 1, 1997

ISBN: 0-06-251533-0

Page Count: 288

Publisher: N/A

Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010

Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 15, 1997

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A CONSPIRACY OF BONES

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

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BADLANDS

A suspenseful, professional-grade north country procedural whose heroine, a deft mix of compassion and attitude, would be...

Box takes another break from his highly successful Joe Pickett series (Stone Cold, 2014, etc.) for a stand-alone about a police detective, a developmentally delayed boy, and a package everyone in North Dakota wants to grab.

Cassandra Dewell can’t leave Montana’s Lewis and Clark County fast enough for her new job as chief investigator for Jon Kirkbride, sheriff of Bakken County. She leaves behind no memories worth keeping: her husband is dead, her boss has made no bones about disliking her, and she’s looking forward to new responsibilities and the higher salary underwritten by North Dakota’s sudden oil boom. But Bakken County has its own issues. For one thing, it’s cold—a whole lot colder than the coldest weather Cassie’s ever imagined. For another, the job she turns out to have been hired for—leading an investigation her new boss doesn’t feel he can entrust to his own force—makes her queasy. The biggest problem, though, is one she doesn’t know about until it slaps her in the face. A fatal car accident that was anything but accidental has jarred loose a stash of methamphetamines and cash that’s become the center of a battle between the Sons of Freedom, Bakken County’s traditional drug sellers, and MS-13, the Salvadorian upstarts who are muscling in on their territory. It’s a setup that leaves scant room for law enforcement officers or for Kyle Westergaard, the 12-year-old paperboy damaged since birth by fetal alcohol syndrome, who’s walked away from the wreck with a prize all too many people would kill for.

A suspenseful, professional-grade north country procedural whose heroine, a deft mix of compassion and attitude, would be welcome to return and tie up the gaping loose end Box leaves. The unrelenting cold makes this the perfect beach read.

Pub Date: July 28, 2015

ISBN: 978-0-312-58321-7

Page Count: 272

Publisher: Minotaur

Review Posted Online: April 21, 2015

Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 15, 2015

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