The K Team goes up against another global terrorist plot whose roots are in Paterson, New Jersey.
Capt. Pete Stanton, the head of Paterson Homicide, was content to dismiss the shootings of PPD Det. Jimmy Dietrich and Susan Avery, whose bodies were found on Dietrich’s boat a year and a half ago, as a murder-suicide. But the shooting of Susan’s husband, Det. Danny Avery, as he sits in a civilian car doing a bit of independent surveillance on Marcella’s restaurant, makes him call in the K Team, those private eyes who specialize in cold cases. Retired detectives Corey Douglas and Laurie Collins supply the brains, their hulking friend Marcus Clark the muscle, and their network of contacts a wealth of specialist expertise. In this case, all those resources will be stretched to the limit, partly because it’s surprisingly hard to connect the three murders (if they were all indeed murders), partly because so many of the colleagues, informants, and lowlifes the K Team talks to end up deceased. It’s very likely that at the time of his death, Avery was spying on New York visitor George Hafner, who’d booked a table for two at Marcella’s that night. Since Hafner was the victim in a drive-by shooting three weeks later in Queens, though, he’s a literal dead end. As Rosenfelt nudges things along by cutting away to computer hacker Ian Solis, whose evil plans are clearly on an epic scale, Corey struggles to make sense of the fact that so many witnesses don’t recognize photographs of so many of the players in the complex case—until he realizes that that failure is itself at the heart of the case.
Untidier and less satisfying than many another conspiracy-to-end-all-conspiracies devised by the ebullient Rosenfelt.Pub Date: March 14, 2023
ISBN: 9781250828965
Page Count: 288
Publisher: Minotaur
Review Posted Online: Jan. 12, 2023
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 1, 2023
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The Wyoming winter brings maverick game warden Joe Pickett poachers, murderers, spies, and some ferocious bad weather.
Seeking a wounded elk and a marauding wolf during a brutal snowstorm, Joe is amazed to discover a human corpse sticking halfway out of a metal outbuilding on the Double Diamond ranch. While he’s conscientiously photographing the crime scene, somebody starts shooting at him. Ranch foreman Clay Hutmacher refuses to say anything about the building’s purpose until he checks with billionaire ranch owner Michael Thompson; Gov. Colter Allen abruptly orders Joe off the case; and departing Twelve Sleep County Sheriff Scott Tibbs, the boss who’d do anything to avoid having Joe make waves, reports that there’s no body at the place he described. Meanwhile, Joe’s old friend Nate Romanowski, an outlaw falconer, is approached by ex–Army Ranger Jason Demo, who’s trying to attract anti-government malcontents to join the secessionist Sovereign Nation, and Joe realizes that his predatory mother-in-law, Missy, is neglecting her fifth or sixth husband, attorney Marcus Hand, who’s dying of pancreatic cancer, to cozy up to Allen, who plans to launch his campaign for reelection at the public library headed by Joe’s wife, Marybeth. What does the death of University of Wyoming engineering professor Zhang Wei, if that’s really who the dead man was, have to do with all of this malfeasance? Like a patient spider, Box plays out plotline after plotline, balancing his sympathies adroitly between anti-establishment libertarians who’ve had enough of the coastal elites and officers sworn to serve and protect their communities, before knotting them all together with a climactic revelation that for better or worse will leave you gasping.
One of the most successful of Box’s increasingly ambitious have-it-all thrillers.Pub Date: Feb. 28, 2023
ISBN: 9780593331309
Page Count: 368
Publisher: Putnam
Review Posted Online: Jan. 12, 2023
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 1, 2023
Categories: SUSPENSE | MYSTERY & DETECTIVE | SUSPENSE | GENERAL MYSTERY & DETECTIVE | GENERAL THRILLER & SUSPENSE | GENERAL FICTION
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BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
Lindsay Boxer faces a ton of trouble in the latest entry in Patterson and Paetro’s Women’s Murder Club series.
Senior crime reporter Cindy Thomas is writing a biography of Evan Burke, a notorious serial killer who sits in solitary confinement in San Quentin. She’s kidnapped by thugs wanting her to talk about her best friend, Lindsay Boxer, who’s an SFPD homicide detective and the story’s main character. San Francisco has a restrictive new gun law, and gun-totin’ folks everywhere have their boxer shorts in a twist. A national resistance movement has formed—Defenders of the Second—whose motto is “We will not comply.” They find it outrageous that the new law makes it illegal to own a gun that can kill 50 people with a single clip. Meanwhile, lots of bodies show up: A young girl disappears and is later found dead in a ditch, and ex-cops are found dead with their lips stapled shut and “You talk, you die” written on their foreheads. An inmate is found hanged in prison. And “a massive but unspecified load of military-style weaponry was en route from Mexico to the City by the Bay.” In a “frustrating, multipronged case,” there’s a harrowing shootout memorialized in a video showing “twenty-two of the scariest seconds” of Boxer’s life. She’s an appealing series hero with loving family and friends, but she may arrive at a crossroads where she has “to choose between my work and [my] baby girl.” The formulaic story has unmemorable writing, but it’s entertaining and well told. You probably won’t have to worry about the main characters, who have thus far survived 21 adventures. Except for the little girl, you can expect people to get what they deserve. It's relatively mild as crime novels go, but the women characters are serious, strong, and admirable.
Enjoyable storytelling by two masters of the craft.Pub Date: May 2, 2022
ISBN: 978-0-316-49937-8
Page Count: 384
Publisher: Little, Brown
Review Posted Online: March 30, 2022
Kirkus Reviews Issue: April 15, 2022
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