An often enthralling, if sometimes perplexing, mystery tale.
In Lyons’ debut thriller, a Seattle reporter’s investigation of a U.S. senator’s sex scandal reveals a secret organization that’s linked to suspicious deaths.
Republican Sen. Milton Bergman of Washington claims innocence when police arrest him after a violent incident in a hotel room. It involves a woman who works for Fantasies, a notoriously secretive “companion service” that refuses to provide their employee’s name to the media. Investigative journalist Natalie Schroder’s boss, Karin, assigns her the story, specifically directing her to identify the Fantasies worker. However, the last reporter who went after Fantasies, Ben Corker, tried to tie it to the Mafia and wound up in prison on drug charges—and subsequently died of pneumonia there. Another journalist, Cynthia Heiner, focused on a mob-related scandal involving one of Bergman’s political allies; she, too, died under mysterious circumstances. Natalie’s investigation is initially routine as she tracks down a photograph of the woman and one of Corker’s notebooks. But a conspiracy slowly unfolds involving a coded message, a missing person, and the likelihood that Fantasies has deeper connections to the underworld than Natalie anticipated. Lyons’ novel thrives on developing its mystery, and it delivers numerous twists as the plot becomes increasingly bizarre. The narrative moves at a steady clip, imparting information in a range of formats, including Natalie’s news articles and another reporter’s TV interview with Bergman. Natalie is shown to be whip-smart but short-tempered, and the senator is revealed to be dealing with guilt over past transgressions—including one that’s much worse than the hotel incident. The novel addresses some serious issues, including police racism and brutality, and there’s plenty of violence, explicit sex, and vulgar language along the way. Lyons’ decidedly ambiguous ending furnishes few answers, and it may spark a variety of interpretations. It’s a grim coda that makes politics seem outright terrifying.
An often enthralling, if sometimes perplexing, mystery tale.Pub Date: Oct. 12, 2018
ISBN: 978-1-5320-5677-2
Page Count: 250
Publisher: iUniverse
Review Posted Online: March 26, 2019
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
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
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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