Tighter than the writer’s most recent efforts, but far from spellbinding.
Baldacci (The Whole Truth, 2008, etc.) moves his recurring Camel Club characters far enough offstage to let tough guy hero Oliver Stone take on a mean mountain town singlehandedly (for a while, at least) in something of the fashion of Lee Child’s Jack Reacher.
The dark American hole in need of a flushing out is Divine, a tiny burg in Virginia’s far southwest coal country where quietly modest Vietnam hero Stone, né John Carr, has landed. It’s not where he was going. He had been getting the hell out of Washington, D.C., where heavy-handed, stonehearted, government forces were about to close in on him, but he couldn’t help stepping into an unfair fight brewing in his Amtrak coach. Handsome, youngish ex-high school quarterback Danny Riker was stupid enough to accuse knuckle draggers with whom he had been playing cards of cheating, leading to a knock down drag out in which Stone wasted all of the thugs and incurred the wrath of the Amtrak conductor, making it necessary for all involved to get off at the next stop. Stone takes Danny under his wing and Danny reluctantly takes Stone back home to Divine and his pretty mother Abby, owner of Divine’s best diner. Stone notes quickly that Divine has a gloss of prosperity very unlike the neighboring hellholes. That sheen doesn’t extend to the downtrodden miners whose hideous labors keep them gobbling methadone day after day. Where’s the money coming from? There is one other visible industry, a supermax prison run by the brother of the handsome, straight-shooting sheriff, but that doesn’t explain the prosperity. Stone begins to nose around the place, running up against numerous unsavory characters, saving lives when possible, getting mad when not, dodging the usual falling safes until his probing causes him to wake up buried alive in a dead coal mine. There is a dalliance with Abby, but the evil feds close in on Stone so it is necessary for his Camel Club cohorts to dig him out in the end.
Tighter than the writer’s most recent efforts, but far from spellbinding.Pub Date: Nov. 4, 2008
ISBN: 978-0-446-19550-8
Page Count: 394
Publisher: Grand Central Publishing
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Oct. 1, 2008
A long buildup culminates in a climax that’s not as satisfying as the rest of the story.
History seems to repeat itself across generations when a murder and the disappearance of a painting lead a Connecticut woman to investigate her sister’s private life.
Marred by tragedy at an early age, sisters Kate Woodward and Beth Lathrop coped with their mother’s murder and their kidnapping during an art heist in the family gallery in two very different ways. Beth married Pete Lathrop, started a family, and continued the family tradition of mentoring starving artists as part of the now-named Lathrop Gallery in the town of Black Hall. Kate was unmoored by what happened, becoming a pilot traveling through life with no connection to anyone except for Beth and childhood friends Lulu and Scotty. When Beth is six months pregnant, she’s killed in her own home, and Moonlight, the Benjamin Morrison painting stolen in the first heist, once again goes missing. Detective Conor Reid couldn’t be more shocked by the turn of events. He’s kept an eye on Beth and Kate for years since being part of the team that investigated the first crime, oversight that Rice presents as sweet rather than stalkerish. Conor is certain that Pete killed Beth. After all, the marriage was on the rocks, and Pete already had a new child with Nicola, his paramour. But Conor’s theory of the crime is harder to prove than he anticipates. Kate’s just as desperate to learn the truth about Beth, and she finds that the more she investigates Beth’s last day, the more she wonders whether she ever knew her sister at all.
A long buildup culminates in a climax that’s not as satisfying as the rest of the story.Pub Date: Feb. 1, 2020
ISBN: 978-1-5420-1820-3
Page Count: 412
Publisher: Thomas & Mercer
Review Posted Online: Nov. 9, 2019
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Dec. 1, 2019
Irresistible high-wire melodrama, though it’s easy to see why D.D. observes, “I think we just fell into a Lifetime movie.”
Like her fifth case (Love You More, 2011, etc.), Boston PD Det. Sgt. D.D. Warren’s sixth subordinates her to another woman just as strong as she is, and a lot more interesting.
Back in high school, Randi Menke, Jackie Knowles and Charlene Rosalind Carter Grant were the Three Musketeers, inseparable buddies who’d do anything for each other. Now Randi and Jackie are dead, strangled a year apart on Jan. 21. So as this Jan. 21 approaches, Charlie is naturally terrified that her turn is coming. Accosting D.D. at a crime scene, she announces that she’s marked for death, describes how she’s gone on the run from her job as a small-town police dispatcher and begs her to solve her murder, still several days away. Underlining her peril is a note left at the scene: “Everyone has to die sometime. Be brave.” But something about Charlie’s story doesn’t add up. If she’s so scared that she’s pulled up stakes and high-tailed it to the big city, why hasn’t she changed her name? Instead of being a victim, could she be the vigilante killer of pedophiles D.D.’s squad has been hunting? Or is she both killer and victim? Alternating between the third-person narration of D.D.’s investigation and Charlie’s feverish first-person narrative, and throwing in more subplots showing abused women fighting their abusers, Gardner brings the ingredients to a rolling boil until she’s finally cut Charlie off from her police defenders, disarmed her and backed her into a corner awaiting her killer.
Irresistible high-wire melodrama, though it’s easy to see why D.D. observes, “I think we just fell into a Lifetime movie.”Pub Date: Feb. 7, 2012
ISBN: 978-0-525-95276-3
Page Count: 368
Publisher: Dutton
Review Posted Online: Jan. 17, 2012
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 1, 2012
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