Stout's Carolina Skeletons (1988) won an Edgar for Best First Novel. But his fourth (after Hell Gate, 1990, and Night of the Ice Storm, 1991) is better—far better: a beautifully modulated, genuinely moving tale of kidnapping and murder in upstate New York. Bessemer Gazette executive editor Will Schafer, a relatively minor figure in Night of the Ice Storm, takes center stage here when he's sent to cover the kidnapping in nearby Long Creek of five-year-old Jamie Brokaw, son of the richest man in the county, a cable-TV entrepreneur. The paper had sent old Fran Spicer, a recovering rummy, to cover the crime, but—in a touch that sets the story's melancholy mood—Fran was found badly hurt and apparently drunk in a car wreck outside Long Creek. In town, Will finds an old FBI pal heading up the case, which is good news since the local cops, with one notable exception, seem as hard and possibly as crooked as they come. Will helps the FBI agent interpret various ransom notes, but when Fran dies in the hospital, the newspaperman turns to a friendly nurse (for whom he falls hard, despite his wedding band) to help him sort out his growing suspicions (based on well-seeded clues) that Fran was murdered: Is it possible that her death and the kidnapping are related? Meanwhile, we share the terror of the kidnapped boy as he's buried alive in an old water heater, and his elation as he's rescued by the hermit of the title- -as well as his horror when the cops take the hermit for a kidnapper and shoot him dead. The FBI man and the cops now seem to consider the case closed—until, in a tense finale, Will, putting all the pieces together, finds himself running for his life in the woods, the real kidnapper shooting at him to kill. Remarkably satisfying, with wonderfully complex characters, a challenging puzzle, and plenty of surprises and suspense. Readers will savor this one.
Pub Date: June 1, 1993
ISBN: 0-89296-503-7
Page Count: 336
Publisher: N/A
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: April 1, 1993
Categories: MYSTERY & DETECTIVE | GENERAL MYSTERY & DETECTIVE
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BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
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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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
Categories: GENERAL MYSTERY & DETECTIVE | MYSTERY & DETECTIVE
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