The mob intrigue, as is customary with Rosenfelt (On Borrowed Time, 2011, etc.), is unconvincing, and, despite the title,...
Dog-loving Andy Carpenter, Paterson, New Jersey's gift to the criminal bar, gets another chance at a murder case he lost six years earlier.
Not even Joey Desimone disputes that his father, Carmine, runs one of central New Jersey’s dominant crime families, or that Joey carried on an adulterous affair with Karen Solarno, or that he was angry and hurt when she broke it off to give her marriage another shot. But Joey vigorously disputed prosecutor Dylan Campbell’s accusation that he rang the Solarnos’ doorbell and gunned down Karen and her husband, Richard. Despite Andy’s best efforts, Joey’s story didn’t sway a jury of his peers, and he’s already done six years of his life sentence when Andy, following an unwitting tip he’s gotten from Carmine’s aging brother and enforcer Nicky Fats, realizes that Richard Solarno was up to his gizzard in gunrunning and that a group of his clients, paramilitary survivalists who deemed a shipment he supplied short on firepower, had threatened his life—facts that Lt. Kyle Wagner of the Montana State Police not only knew, but duly reported to Dylan Campbell six years ago. Even Henry “Hatchet” Henderson, the irascible judge who seems to preside over all Andy’s trials (Dog Tags, 2010, etc.), acknowledges that the prosecution’s concealment of such exculpatory evidence constitutes grounds for a new trial. If only the trail weren’t so cold—and cooling further every day, thanks to the executions of Nicky Fats, Carmine and associates as far away as Peru at the hands of Simon Ryerson, a Harvard MBA who thinks the time is ripe for a hostile takeover of the Desimone empire and doesn’t mind stepping on Joey’s toes in order to close the deal.
The mob intrigue, as is customary with Rosenfelt (On Borrowed Time, 2011, etc.), is unconvincing, and, despite the title, there’s not much for dog fanciers this time around. But Andy is as effervescent as ever, and the courtroom byplay is consistently entertaining.Pub Date: July 17, 2012
ISBN: 978-0-312-64804-6
Page Count: 384
Publisher: Minotaur
Review Posted Online: June 19, 2012
Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 15, 2012
Greed, love, and extrasensory abilities combine in two middling mysteries.
Coulter’s treasured FBI agents take on two cases marked by danger and personal involvement.
Dillon Savitch and his wife, Lacey Sherlock, have special abilities that have served them well in law enforcement (Paradox, 2018, etc.). But that doesn't prevent Sherlock’s car from hitting a running man after having been struck by a speeding SUV that runs a red light. The runner, though clearly injured, continues on his way and disappears. Not so the SUV driver, a security engineer for the Bexholt Group, which has ties to government agencies. Sherlock’s own concussion causes memory loss so severe that she doesn’t recognize Savitch or remember their son, Sean. The whole incident seems more suspicious when a blood test from the splatter of the man Sherlock hit reveals that he’s Justice Cummings, an analyst for the CIA. The agency’s refusal to cooperate makes Savitch certain that Bexholt is involved in a deep-laid plot. Meanwhile, Special Agent Griffin Hammersmith is visiting friends who run a cafe in the touristy Virginia town of Gaffers Ridge. Hammersmith, who has psychic abilities, is taken aback when he hears in his mind a woman’s cry for help. Reporter Carson DeSilva, who came to the area to interview a Nobel Prize winner, also has psychic abilities, and she overhears the thoughts of Rafer Bodine, a young man who has apparently kidnapped and possibly murdered three teenage girls. Unluckily, she blurts out her thoughts, and she’s snatched and tied up in a cellar by Bodine. Bodine may be a killer, but he’s also the nephew of the sheriff and the son of the local bigwig. So the sheriff arrests Hammersmith and refuses to accept his FBI credentials. Bodine's mother has psychic powers strong enough to kill, but she meets her match in Hammersmith, DeSilva, Savitch, and Sherlock.
Greed, love, and extrasensory abilities combine in two middling mysteries.Pub Date: July 30, 2019
ISBN: 978-1-5011-9365-1
Page Count: 512
Publisher: Simon & Schuster
Review Posted Online: June 30, 2019
Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 15, 2019
Slaughter (Cop Town, 2014, etc.) is so uncompromising in following her blood trails to the darkest places imaginable that...
Twenty-four years after a traumatic disappearance tore a Georgia family apart, Slaughter’s scorching stand-alone picks them up and shreds them all over again.
The Carrolls have never been the same since 19-year-old Julia vanished. After years of fruitlessly pestering the police, her veterinarian father, Sam, killed himself; her librarian mother, Helen, still keeps the girl's bedroom untouched, just in case. Julia’s sisters have been equally scarred. Lydia Delgado has sold herself for drugs countless times, though she’s been clean for years now; Claire Scott has just been paroled after knee-capping her tennis partner for a thoughtless remark. The evening that Claire’s ankle bracelet comes off, her architect husband, Paul, is callously murdered before her eyes and, without a moment's letup, she stumbles on a mountainous cache of snuff porn. Paul’s business partner, Adam Quinn, demands information from Claire and threatens her with dire consequences if she doesn’t deliver. The Dunwoody police prove as ineffectual as ever. FBI agent Fred Nolan is more suavely menacing than helpful. So Lydia and Claire, who’ve grown so far apart that they’re virtual strangers, are unwillingly thrown back on each other for help. Once she’s plunged you into this maelstrom, Slaughter shreds your own nerves along with those of the sisters, not simply by a parade of gruesome revelations—though she supplies them in abundance—but by peeling back layer after layer from beloved family members Claire and Lydia thought they knew. The results are harrowing.
Slaughter (Cop Town, 2014, etc.) is so uncompromising in following her blood trails to the darkest places imaginable that she makes most of her high-wire competition look pallid, formulaic, or just plain fake.Pub Date: Sept. 29, 2015
ISBN: 978-0-06-242905-6
Page Count: 400
Publisher: Morrow/HarperCollins
Review Posted Online: June 30, 2015
Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 15, 2015
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