Palumbo, who’s willing to do absolutely anything to keep up the tension, succeeds admirably. Readers who don’t require...
Clinical psychologist Daniel Rinaldi gets yanked out of a session with a patient and onto a smoking-hot trail of dirty money, dirtier politicians and wholesale killing.
At the first sign of trouble, one of the two robbers who’d stormed into Pittsburgh’s First Allegheny Bank turns tail and flees. The other one executes assistant manager Bobby Marks, who doesn’t stay quite still enough; frees Bobby’s girlfriend, bank officer Treva Williams; keeps three more hostages inside; and begins issuing demands. That’s when Det. Eleanor Lowrey phones Dr. Rinaldi, whom she’s worked with before (Mirror Image, 2010, etc.), and demands that he high-tail it downtown and interview the traumatized Treva before things get worse. Rinaldi does his best, but things get worse anyway, and the robber, stealing a page from the Hannibal Lecter playbook, makes a clean getaway. The robbery-turned-murder is only the beginning of a crime spree that will seriously complicate D.A. Leland Sinclair’s gubernatorial bid, make Rinaldi wonder whether Post-Gazette reporter Sam Weiss is indeed correct that Sinclair is in attorney Evan McCloskey’s pocket, and produce a collateral-damage casualty list worthy of a high-stakes actioner. There’s no need for Palumbo to dial down the suspense while Rinaldi goes looking for suspects, since they keep coming at him in waves. Through it all, this unlikely hero, even when he’s abducted and threatened with death, keeps his cool, keeps his edge and never backs down from either the bad guys or his alleged allies, as if he were Jack Reacher with a psychology degree.
Palumbo, who’s willing to do absolutely anything to keep up the tension, succeeds admirably. Readers who don’t require originality and plausibility in their detective thrillers will be as happy as career politicians whose skeletons are securely locked away.Pub Date: Nov. 1, 2011
ISBN: 978-1-59058-957-1
Page Count: 350
Publisher: Poisoned Pen
Review Posted Online: Oct. 2, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Oct. 15, 2011
The book ends on a cliffhanger worthy of Harry Potter, and Rowling’s readers will eagerly await the next installment.
J.K. Rowling continues her investigation of the dark side—this time giving us three gruesomely twisted suspects—in her latest pseudonymous mystery.
Robin Ellacott first showed up at hard-living private eye Cormoran Strike’s office as a temp, but by the end of their second big case (The Silkworm, 2014), she’d become indispensable as a fellow investigator. As this third book opens, she’s arriving at work off Charing Cross Road and accepts a package from a deliveryman, thinking it’s a shipment of favors for her upcoming wedding to Matthew, the jealous fiance who disapproves of her job. When she opens it, though, she’s horrified to find a woman’s leg. Someone seems to be using Robin to get to her boss, who's missing a leg himself, having lost it in an explosion in Afghanistan. Strike can think of four men, right off the top of his head, who would be capable of such a horrific thing: the stepfather he thinks killed his mother with a heroin overdose; a famous mobster; and two sick bastards he tangled with when he was an Army investigator. The police immediately go after the mobster, who, on second thought, Strike finds an unlikely culprit—so he and Robin set to work tracking down the other three. Rowling is, as always, an unflinching chronicler of evil, interspersing chapters told from the perspective of the carefully unnamed perpetrator—a serial killer with a penchant for keeping “souvenirs” from his victims’ bodies and an unhealthy obsession with Strike—as he follows Robin around London, waiting for her to get distracted just long enough for him to kill her, too. Robin and Strike’s relationship continues to be the best part of the series, though perhaps it’s too easy to dislike Matthew; readers will be cheering when Robin breaks off their engagement, but of course it won’t be that easy to get rid of him. The story has its longueurs, and if Galbraith weren’t actually Rowling, an editor might have told him to trim a bit, especially once Strike and Robin close in on their three suspects and start conducting repetitive stakeouts (and especially since the two who aren’t Strike’s former stepfather are hard to keep straight).
The book ends on a cliffhanger worthy of Harry Potter, and Rowling’s readers will eagerly await the next installment.Pub Date: Oct. 20, 2015
ISBN: 978-0-316-34993-2
Page Count: 512
Publisher: Mulholland Books/Little, Brown
Review Posted Online: Oct. 17, 2015
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Nov. 1, 2015
As usual, Coben piles on the plot twists, false leads, violent set pieces and climactic surprises with the unfocused...
After six years of spinning jaw-dropping stand-alone thrillers, Coben brings back his sports agent—make that everything agent—Myron Bolitar (Darkest Fear, 2000, etc.) for an encore.
Overhearing high-school senior Erin Wilder, his current ladylove’s daughter, sharing confidences with her friend Aimee Biel about getting driven by wasted friends, Myron Bolitar promises both girls that if they ever need a ride, they can call him and he’ll pick them up, no questions asked. All too soon he gets a chance to deliver. Aimee phones him from midtown Manhattan, where he just happens to be staying, and asks him to drive her to suburban New Jersey. Myron obliges but pushes a bit too hard with the questions, and Aimee vanishes into a strange house. The next day she’s still missing, and in jig time the police, armed with Myron’s credit-card slips and EZ-Pass records, come calling. It turns out that Myron’s not a credible suspect. But because everybody connects Aimee’s disappearance to that of fellow student Katie Rochester three months ago, Myron’s on the hook with some serious people, from Aimee’s parents, who beg him to bring her home, to Katie’s mobbed-up dad, who’s too proud to beg but has other ways of getting him to cooperate.
As usual, Coben piles on the plot twists, false leads, violent set pieces and climactic surprises with the unfocused intensity that have made his thrillers (The Innocent, 2005, etc.) such a hot ticket.Pub Date: April 25, 2006
ISBN: 0-525-94949-6
Page Count: 384
Publisher: Dutton
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 15, 2006
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