An attention-grabbing procedural with unsettling surprises inside every snowbank.
Several odd murders test the skills of a pair of seasoned detectives.
A family man is stabbed in a burger joint for no apparent reason, and a body is found in an isolated holiday cottage. DI Costello, who’s returned to her duties with Police Scotland following a leave of absence, reunites with her longtime partner, DCI Colin Anderson, with whom she has a complicated relationship, to investigate the crimes. Anderson is happy to escape his own tense family situation and is forced by the weather to assemble an unorthodox crime-scene team which includes DC Morna Taverner, who never noticed that her husband was a drug-dealing rapist. While part of Costello’s team follows up on the burger joint murder in Glasgow, he and the rest of the team battle a road-closing blizzard to reach the remote and starkly beautiful Highland town of Glen Riske, where Charlie Priestly, a police officer’s son, has been a murder suspect ever since he returned home incoherent and covered in blood. When enigmatic PC James McIver takes Costello and company to the rental cottage in Riske Wood where Charlie found a body, they see that it's on the far side of the River Riske from the town and that the bridge has a gate that can be unlocked by the owner by remote control. When the gate is locked, the only way across the river is by the "coffin bridge": "It's a suspended coffin that you lie in and then propel yourself across the river by a pulley and a rope," McIver explains. With only Charlie's tracks visible in the snow, the detectives find a dead German man who was renting the house for the Christmas holiday, and then they find his wife, equally dead, in the garden. The cottage was supposed to have been occupied by a much disliked family, but the occupants were switched at the last minute: Could it have been a case of mistaken identity? Dogged police work, computer skills, and an ability to mine both the past and present for clues to complex relationships help the isolated team as they struggle to make sense of widely separated crimes that may be related.
An attention-grabbing procedural with unsettling surprises inside every snowbank.Pub Date: June 2, 2020
ISBN: 978-0-7278-8923-2
Page Count: 256
Publisher: Severn House
Review Posted Online: March 14, 2020
Kirkus Reviews Issue: April 1, 2020
If you love good crime writing but aren’t familiar with Winslow’s work, read this trilogy in order.
The dramatic conclusion to the trilogy about two New England crime families begun in City on Fire (2022) and City of Dreams (2023).
Near the end of his journey, multimillionaire Danny Ryan watches a casino implode in a mushroom cloud of dust and muses about his life’s implosions: “The cancer that killed his wife, the depression that destroyed his love, the moral rot that took his soul.” Danny is from Providence, Rhode Island, and desperately tried to leave his criminal life behind him. But using a ton of ill-gotten gains, he invests heavily in Las Vegas properties. Congress is conducting an investigation into gambling that could destroy his casino business and even land him in jail. An FBI agent plans to take Danny down for major sins he’d like to repent for. Meanwhile, can he make peace with his enemies? Nope, doesn’t look like it. Even if the parties involved want to put the past behind them, the trouble is that they don’t trust each other. Is Vern Winegard setting Dan up? Is Dan setting Vern up? “Trust? Trust is children waiting for Santa Claus.” So what could have been a “Kumbaya,” nobody-wants-to-read-this story turns into a grisly bloodletting filled with language that would set Sister Mary Margaret’s wimple on fire—figuratively speaking, as she’s not in the book. But the Catholic reference is appropriate: Two of the many colorful characters of ill repute are known as the Altar Boys, serving “Last Communion” to their victims. On the law-abiding side and out of the line of fire is an ex-nun-turned-prosecutor nicknamed Attila the Nun, who’s determined to bring justice for a gory matricide. (Rhode Island really had such a person, by the way.) Finally, the prose is just fun: A friend warns Dan about Allie Licata: “In a world of sick fucks, even the sick fucks think Licata’s a sick fuck.” A couple of things to note: This not only ends the trilogy, but it also closes out the author’s career, as he has said he’ll write no more novels.
If you love good crime writing but aren’t familiar with Winslow’s work, read this trilogy in order.Pub Date: April 2, 2024
ISBN: 9780063079472
Page Count: 400
Publisher: Morrow/HarperCollins
Review Posted Online: Dec. 16, 2023
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 15, 2024
PROFILES
A tale that’s hard to believe but easy to swallow in a single gulp.
A bear is hunting prey in Wyoming’s Bighorns. And not just any bear.
It’s bad enough that Clay Hutmacher, who manages the Double Diamond Ranch, has lost his son, Clay Jr., to a vicious attack by a grizzly bear. What’s much worse is that Clay Jr.—who’d been about to pop the question to game warden Joe Pickett’s daughter, Sheridan—is only the first of the victims over an exceptionally broad geographical area. Marshal Marvin Bertignolli is clawed and bitten to death over in Hanna. Sgt. Ryan Winner is found bleeding out north of Rawlins. Former Twelve Sleep County prosecutor Dulcie Schalk, one of two survivors of an ambush, doesn’t survive her final encounter. The four experts chosen to kill the grizzly rope Joe into their expedition, but since their quarry keeps turning up far from the last sighting, the most meaningful confrontation the Predator Attack Team has is with a pair of Mama Bears, animal rights activists who demand due process for Tisiphone, as they’ve dubbed the presumed killer. Box, who’s far too canny to leave Tisiphone alone on center stage, follows Joe’s old antagonist Dallas Cates as the ex–rodeo star is released from prison and embarks on his revenge tour, which takes him to Lee Ogburn-Russell, an inventor whose life Dallas saved, and Axel Soledad, a correspondent who shares so many enemies with Dallas that he suggests they go after them together. Franchise fans will appreciate new details about Joe’s complicated family, the obligatory high-country landscapes, and yet another corrupt law enforcer.
A tale that’s hard to believe but easy to swallow in a single gulp.Pub Date: Feb. 27, 2024
ISBN: 9780593331347
Page Count: 384
Publisher: Putnam
Review Posted Online: Jan. 5, 2024
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 1, 2024
© Copyright 2024 Kirkus Media LLC. All Rights Reserved.
Follow
Popular in this Genre
We can’t wait for you to join Kirkus!
It’s free and takes less than 10 seconds!
Already have an account? Log in.
OR
Sign in with GoogleTrouble signing in? Retrieve credentials.
Welcome Back!
OR
Sign in with GoogleTrouble signing in? Retrieve credentials.
bookshelf
