by David Hanrahan ‧ RELEASE DATE: March 17, 2017
A sound mystery fronted by an immensely likable detective primed for a sequel.
A retired Massachusetts cop-turned-private eye aids police in tracking down a killer intent on taking out greedy, specifically targeted corporate executives in this debut thriller.
The Valentine’s Day murder of Amalgamated Worldwide Enterprises’ CFO Sam Johnston is shocking by itself. But Johnston’s boss is AWE Chairman and CEO Bradford Baxton III, the notorious “king of downsizing,” whose purchase and systematic decimation of companies have left thousands unemployed. Baxton’s tie to the murder is undisputed later when a message from the killer, in the style of a press release, says AWE will be experiencing its own downsizing and lists future terminations, including the CEO. After the culprit follows through on at least one of those executions, Baxton seeks help from former cop Bill Coine, whom the company’s chief of security recommended. Coine’s enjoying retirement with his wife, Jeanie, but reluctantly takes the case—though first he has to file for a private investigator license. Countless people whose lives Baxton ruined have motives, but Coine quickly zeros in on public relations officer Lt. Kimberly Hale. Her father’s suicide years ago was likely the result of an AWE acquisition. Evidence against Kimberly, however, is circumstantial, and cops hunt for something more concrete. Baxton, meanwhile, lives up to the sour reputation he’s gradually earned. He’s undoubtedly worried about Johnston’s computer, making a motion for authorities to return it and claiming he doesn’t know the password for accessing it. Whether or not he’s hiding something sinister may come out at someone’s criminal trial, with cops hoping to put a murderer behind bars. Hanrahan’s novel is dense with characters, all of which the author skillfully manages. Individuals are progressively introduced, for example, and not all at once, while many, like First Assistant District Attorney and Chief of Homicide Sandra Jones, ease into the plot among a handful of already established characters. Likewise, Kimberly’s perspective puts an early spotlight on her, and though she’s the most viable suspect, it’s not abundantly clear that she’s guilty of the murders. This makes for an intriguing contrast to the characters’ unusually candid dialogue. Most say what they’re thinking, as in Baxton discussing Coine’s potential employment: “But let’s be blunt. I want to stay alive. That’s the real reason I’m willing to give you this retainer and an unlimited expense account.” Mystery, in spite of this, remains, with the killer’s identity in question and uncertainty surrounding Johnston’s “special projects,” presumably somewhere on his computer. Unfortunately, some of the dialogue is repetitive, especially different characters referring to Kimberly in similar colloquial terms: “gal,” “lady,” or “little miss blue eyes.” But Coine is an exceptional protagonist, joining the story as an outsider: he’s sleeping in while everyone else has been engaged in the narrative’s action. Conversations between Coine and Jeanie are diverting, especially when she initially urges her husband not to get involved with Johnston’s murder. It’s therefore disappointing when Jeanie drops out of the story, and even Coine is scarce during the final act (though it’s reasonable that his part in a trial would be minute).
A sound mystery fronted by an immensely likable detective primed for a sequel.Pub Date: March 17, 2017
ISBN: 978-1-5410-0469-6
Page Count: 436
Publisher: CreateSpace
Review Posted Online: Oct. 2, 2017
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
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by Kathy Reichs ‧ RELEASE DATE: March 17, 2020
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
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by J.A. Jance ‧ RELEASE DATE: April 2, 2019
Proficient but eminently predictable. Amid all the time shifts and embedded backstories, the most surprising feature is how...
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A convicted killer’s list of five people he wants dead runs the gamut from the wife he’s already had murdered to franchise heroine Ali Reynolds.
Back in the day, women came from all over to consult Santa Clarita fertility specialist Dr. Edward Gilchrist. Many of them left his care happily pregnant, never dreaming that the father of the babies they carried was none other than the physician himself, who donated his own sperm rather than that of the handsome, athletic, disease-free men pictured in his scrapbook. When Alexandra Munsey’s son, Evan, is laid low by the kidney disease he’s inherited from his biological father and she returns to Gilchrist in search of the donor’s medical records, the roof begins to fall in on him. By the time it’s done falling, he’s serving a life sentence in Folsom Prison for commissioning the death of his wife, Dawn, the former nurse and sometime egg donor who’d turned on him. With nothing left to lose, Gilchrist tattoos himself with the initials of five people he blames for his fall: Dawn; Leo Manuel Aurelio, the hit man he’d hired to dispose of her; Kaitlyn Todd, the nurse/receptionist who took Dawn’s place; Alex Munsey, whose search for records upset his apple cart; and Ali Reynolds, the TV reporter who’d helped put Alex in touch with the dozen other women who formed the Progeny Project because their children looked just like hers. No matter that Ali’s been out of both California and the news business for years; Gilchrist and his enablers know that revenge can’t possibly be served too cold. Wonder how far down that list they’ll get before Ali, aided once more by Frigg, the methodical but loose-cannon AI first introduced in Duel to the Death (2018), turns on them?
Proficient but eminently predictable. Amid all the time shifts and embedded backstories, the most surprising feature is how little the boundary-challenged AI, who gets into the case more or less inadvertently, differs from your standard human sidekick with issues.Pub Date: April 2, 2019
ISBN: 978-1-5011-5101-9
Page Count: 352
Publisher: Gallery Books/Simon & Schuster
Review Posted Online: Feb. 18, 2019
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 1, 2019
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