After an uncharacteristically weak outing (Below Zero, 2009), it’s great to see the usual Box strengths—exhilarating...
Wyoming game warden Joe Pickett’s last patrol before he returns to his family and his old posting in Twelve Sleep County leads to another round of tense high-country adventure.
Something is wrong in the Sierra Madre. Two years after Olympic track hopeful Diane Shober disappeared while she was training in the high altitude, locals like fisherman Dave Farkus still whisper about the place. Now someone has butchered an elk—maybe a Wendigo, a spirit who’s supposed to stick to the Canadian side of the border. When he goes to investigate, Joe runs afoul of the Grim brothers. Ticketed for fishing without a license, Caleb Grimmengruber warns Joe to drop the matter and ride off. But Joe’s insistence on doing his job has bloody consequences that leave Joe, “outgunned, outnumbered, and outmanned,” limping back to civilization. Discredited once again by law officers who improbably dismiss his story when they can’t find the Grims, Joe resigns himself to riding out his enforced leave in his home. But forces conspire to send him and his outlaw buddy Nate Romanowski back into the Sierra Madre to look for Diane, and inevitably for the twins who bested him the first time around, this time to complete a mission that Nate calls “the worst thing we’ve ever done.”
After an uncharacteristically weak outing (Below Zero, 2009), it’s great to see the usual Box strengths—exhilarating landscapes, high adventure, thrilling suspense, surprising moral quandaries—done to a turn.Pub Date: April 6, 2010
ISBN: 978-0-399-15645-8
Page Count: 368
Publisher: Putnam
Review Posted Online: Dec. 22, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 15, 2010
Cheap fun: a guilty pleasure few monster-addicts will be able to resist.
A witty, grisly debut about the secret adventures of a Florida sociopath who murders only bad guys.
Dexter Morgan makes his living off the blood of the dead—literally. A “blood-splatter analyst” for the Miami Police Department, Dexter works only on the messiest cases, nearly all homicides and quite a few the work of serial killers. It takes one to know one, too, for Dexter has a very deep and well-guarded secret: He’s been bumping people off for years. Dexter knew from an early age that he was somehow different, and his father, Detective Harry Morgan, had picked up enough abnormal psychology on the job to recognize the signs. Harry tried to help Dexter out by suggesting that the boy might want to make a virtue of necessity by concentrating his murderous energies on the truly wicked people of the world—and Dexter agreed, beginning with the hospice nurse who was systematically overdosing Harry with morphine. From that day forward, Dexter (and his ghostly imaginary friend, the Dark Passenger) have done well by doing bad, disposing of a long line of pedophiles, killers, sadists, and thugs. A consummate professional, Dexter has never left a shred of incriminating evidence behind, but lately he’s begun to worry. A copycat killer is on the loose, leaving a string of victims strewn about the dark byways of Miami bearing the trademarks of Dexter’s handiwork in an obvious attempt to lure him out of hiding. Dexter can play his hand close to his chest, but unfortunately for him one of the cops assigned to the new cases is his sister Deborah, who knows nothing of Dexter’s extracurricular activities. Part of Dexter wants to come of the cold and play with this new guy on the block, but he feels an obligation to keep his sister from being implicated. It’s not just thieves, after all: There’s honor among murderers, too.
Cheap fun: a guilty pleasure few monster-addicts will be able to resist.Pub Date: July 27, 2004
ISBN: 0-385-51123-X
Page Count: 304
Publisher: Doubleday
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: June 1, 2004
With an aura of both enchantment and authenticity, Bardugo’s compulsively readable novel leaves a portal ajar for equally...
Yale’s secret societies hide a supernatural secret in this fantasy/murder mystery/school story.
Most Yale students get admitted through some combination of impressive academics, athletics, extracurriculars, family connections, and donations, or perhaps bribing the right coach. Not Galaxy “Alex” Stern. The protagonist of Bardugo’s (King of Scars, 2019, etc.) first novel for adults, a high school dropout and low-level drug dealer, Alex got in because she can see dead people. A Yale dean who's a member of Lethe, one of the college’s famously mysterious secret societies, offers Alex a free ride if she will use her spook-spotting abilities to help Lethe with its mission: overseeing the other secret societies’ occult rituals. In Bardugo’s universe, the “Ancient Eight” secret societies (Lethe is the eponymous Ninth House) are not just old boys’ breeding grounds for the CIA, CEOs, Supreme Court justices, and so on, as they are in ours; they’re wielders of actual magic. Skull and Bones performs prognostications by borrowing patients from the local hospital, cutting them open, and examining their entrails. St. Elmo’s specializes in weather magic, useful for commodities traders; Aurelian, in unbreakable contracts; Manuscript goes in for glamours, or “illusions and lies,” helpful to politicians and movie stars alike. And all these rituals attract ghosts. It’s Alex’s job to keep the supernatural forces from embarrassing the magical elite by releasing chaos into the community (all while trying desperately to keep her grades up). “Dealing with ghosts was like riding the subway: Do not make eye contact. Do not smile. Do not engage. Otherwise, you never know what might follow you home.” A townie’s murder sets in motion a taut plot full of drug deals, drunken assaults, corruption, and cover-ups. Loyalties stretch and snap. Under it all runs the deep, dark river of ambition and anxiety that at once powers and undermines the Yale experience. Alex may have more reason than most to feel like an imposter, but anyone who’s spent time around the golden children of the Ivy League will likely recognize her self-doubt.
With an aura of both enchantment and authenticity, Bardugo’s compulsively readable novel leaves a portal ajar for equally dazzling sequels.Pub Date: Oct. 1, 2019
ISBN: 978-1-250-31307-2
Page Count: 448
Publisher: Flatiron Books
Review Posted Online: June 30, 2019
Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 15, 2019
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