Next book

CRUEL MERCY

To call Mark’s novels (Taking Pity, 2015, etc.) police procedurals is like calling the Mona Lisa a pretty painting....

A British policeman blunders into gang warfare and worse in New York City.

DS Aector McAvoy of the Humberside Police knows what’s important to him: his wife, Roisin; their children; his boss, Trish Pharaoh; and his job. When Irish boxer Shay Helden is murdered and his coach, Brishen Ayres, badly wounded and left in a coma while on a trip to New York, the Traveler families of both men suspect rival Traveler and fellow boxer Valentine Teague, who is Roisin’s brother. Pharaoh pulls strings to get Aector sent to New York to try to prove Valentine innocent before the long-simmering differences between the Traveler families become open warfare. His NYPD liaison, Ronald Alto, has been told only that Aector has knowledge that might help with the case, but Aector opens up to him, which puts Valentine on the suspect list in New York. Since the visitors had been in New York only two days and spent most of their time at the gym in hopes of arranging a boxing match for Shay with a major promoter, the police are having trouble establishing another motive. The pair also visited Saint Colman’s church, the former parish of Father Jimmy Whelan, a popular priest now in Ireland who helped Valentine get a last-minute passport to follow Shay and Brishen. Aector’s questions attract the interest of the Italian and Russian mafias, who both have an interest in boxing, legal and otherwise. Helping the NYPD catch a sexual predator helps establish Aector with the locals, but much is still being hidden from him. Occasional chapters throughout the book reveal the thoughts of both a stone-cold Mafia hit man and a psychopathic killer whose horrific crimes may be related to both the Mafia and the church. Though he’s never imagined chatting face to face with Mafia bosses, that may be the only way he can untangle a series of murders past and present and save Valentine.

To call Mark’s novels (Taking Pity, 2015, etc.) police procedurals is like calling the Mona Lisa a pretty painting. Beautifully crafted, filled with flashbacks, horror, angst, and chilling detail, this one is his most complex and best yet.

Pub Date: Feb. 7, 2017

ISBN: 978-0-399-18511-3

Page Count: 368

Publisher: Blue Rider Press

Review Posted Online: Dec. 5, 2016

Kirkus Reviews Issue: Dec. 15, 2016

Next book

BADLANDS

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

Awards & Accolades

Likes

  • Readers Vote
  • 29


Our Verdict

  • Our Verdict
  • GET IT


  • New York Times Bestseller

Next book

THE A LIST

Proficient but eminently predictable. Amid all the time shifts and embedded backstories, the most surprising feature is how...

Awards & Accolades

Likes

  • Readers Vote
  • 29


Our Verdict

  • Our Verdict
  • GET IT


  • New York Times Bestseller

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

Close Quickview