A debut thriller whose predominant tone, as its title suggests, is a profound sadness that no death, not even for an...
A debut thriller that takes its reluctant Boston investigator deep into the heart of Bangkok, then deeper still.
After the cheating husband she’d asked ex-reporter Sebastian Damon to tail punches him out, insurance executive Dolores Moyle offers Sebastian a consolation prize of sorts: $7,500 plus expenses if he can prove that Linda Watts, the Laotian-born BankBoston vice president reported dead of an overdose in a tawdry Bangkok guesthouse, is still among the living. Dolores’ interest is in saving her firm half a million dollars; Sebastian’s interest is murkier, harder to pin down and constantly changing. He makes contact with his father’s old Army friend Sgt. Sam Honeyman, who knows every con artist and bar girl in town, and talks to Doug Brody, the fellow roomer who found Linda’s body, just a day before Brody also checks out. Clearly, there’s something funny about the case, and Sebastian’s exchanges with Col. Nagaphit, the high-ranking police official who came all the way from Thonglor station to investigate, do nothing to dispel his suspicions. There’ll be intrigue aplenty in Bangkok before Sebastian’s discoveries there send him into the villages of Laos, pursuing a goal poles from his original quest. Throughout it all, veteran journalist Cox’s first novel gradually and expertly turns up the heat, doling out the exotic details by careful teaspoons early on before plunging Sebastian into a world far from his comfort zone.
A debut thriller whose predominant tone, as its title suggests, is a profound sadness that no death, not even for an insurance company’s client, is a good death.Pub Date: Feb. 19, 2013
ISBN: 978-1-250-01231-9
Page Count: 304
Publisher: Minotaur
Review Posted Online: Dec. 16, 2012
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 1, 2013
BOOK REVIEW
The perfect bonbon to pick up for distraction during those long production numbers at the actual Oscars.
Think the competition among Oscar nominees is a blood sport? You have no idea.
Desperation at Dawn has snared Academy Award nominations for writer/director Peter Barrington; his wife, composer Hattie Barrington; lead actress Tessa Tweed; supporting actor Mark Weldon; and Tessa’s husband, Ben Bacchetti, who, as head of Centurion Studios, would bask in the award for best picture. Tessa’s nomination is nice for her, but it grates on Viveca Rothschild, the blonde bombshell who, determined that her own third nomination will be the charm, resolves to do whatever it takes to undermine Tessa, beginning with getting hired on Trial by Fire, Tessa’s aptly named new film, and planting snippy items about her in gossip columns. But that’s far from the biggest problem lurking beneath the tinsel. Viveca’s boyfriend, Iraq War vet Bruce, has PTSD and a much less nuanced approach than his girlfriend to stopping Tessa in her tracks. Even worse, crime boss Gino Patelli, suspecting that his uncle and predecessor, Carlo Gigante, was offed by Centurion producer Billy Barnett, hires a series of variously hapless underlings to find and kill him. As Billy tells his attorney, Peter’s father Stone Barrington, when he’s arrested for a rare murder he didn’t commit, “It seems to be open season on Billy Barnett.” But the predators’ job is considerably complicated by the fact that Billy, like Mark Weldon, is an alter ego of former CIA operative Teddy Fay, who effortlessly spots every Patelli employee early on, switches identities in a flash to escape them, and shoots them when he can’t. So the suspense in this enjoyably weightless tale is focused on the climactic Academy Award ceremonies. Who wants to bet that Tessa or Teddy will get killed or that Desperation at Dawn won’t sweep the categories in which it’s nominated?
The perfect bonbon to pick up for distraction during those long production numbers at the actual Oscars.Pub Date: June 2, 2020
ISBN: 978-0-593-08325-3
Page Count: 320
Publisher: Putnam
Review Posted Online: March 1, 2020
Kirkus Reviews Issue: April 1, 2020
A high-country Presumed Innocent that moves like greased lightning. First of a welcome new series, though it’s hard to...
Rookie Twelve Sleep County Game Warden Joe Pickett’s not much of a shot, and he’s been looking like a goat ever since poacher Ote Keeley got the drop on him with his own gun during a routine arrest. But at least he’s doing better than Ote, who’s turned up dead on the woodpile outside Joe’s house. Joe’s search in Crazy Woman Creek canyon for the two outfitters and guides Ote was most recently partnered with ends happily, though violently, and suddenly Joe is the man of the hour. Longtime County Sheriff Bud Barnum nervously asks Joe’s assurance that he’s not going to support neighboring game warden Wacey Hedeman’s challenge in the upcoming election; trophy wife Aimee Kensinger, who really likes men in uniforms, invites Joe’s family to housesit her palatial digs for three weeks; and wily Vern Dunnegan, Joe’s predecessor, wants Joe to join him in pulling down big bucks from InterWest resources, the fat-cat corporation for whose gas pipeline Vern’s lining up local support. All this good news is only a front, of course, for a monstrous assault on Joe’s livelihood, his integrity, and his family—and incidentally on an inoffensive species long assumed extinct. In response, Joe promises one of the bad guys that “things are going to get real western,” and that’s exactly what happens in the satisfyingly action-filled climax.
A high-country Presumed Innocent that moves like greased lightning. First of a welcome new series, though it’s hard to imagine tourism-marketing exec Box topping his debut.Pub Date: July 9, 2001
ISBN: 0-399-14748-9
Page Count: 304
Publisher: Putnam
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 1, 2001
PERSPECTIVES
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