The 16th entry in Lake’s series (Death on the Rocks, 2014, etc.) is slow to fulfill the promise of its title. But period...
A voyage to the New World is anything but smooth sailing for an 18th-century sleuth.
Twice-widowed apothecary John Rawlings is en route from England with his family when he meets the first of many obstacles to a planned business venture. His ship is wrecked, and it’s many months before he, his three children, and a few other survivors can travel from the remote island where they’ve washed up to civilization and finally to Boston. The company includes an Indian guide, two dandies, and an imperious widow, as well as a fading beauty, Lady Conway, and her much younger husband. When Rawlings finally arrives in Boston, his hope of selling his recipe for carbonated water fades: his prospective partner in trade has died and left his tavern to his niece. Rawlings goes into business with her instead by setting up an apothecary shop in the tavern. One of his first patients is the celebrated Dr. Joseph Warren, and through him Rawlings meets some of the other prominent Sons of Liberty. Although he sympathizes with some of their complaints, he’s still loyal to the Crown and more intent on keeping his children safe than meddling in politics. When he places his daughter in a school for girls, he learns that the headmistress is a former actress—and a former lover of his younger years. They resume their affair in the midst of growing Colonial unrest and threats of rebellion. Rawlings is an uneasy witness to the Boston Tea Party and the death of Lady Conway, who, disguised as a boy, falls from a ship’s rigging and drowns. After he uncovers secrets about her distant past and her more recent activities, his attempts to find her killer lead to danger for both himself and his beloved children.
The 16th entry in Lake’s series (Death on the Rocks, 2014, etc.) is slow to fulfill the promise of its title. But period detail and quirky characters help make up for the leisurely pace.Pub Date: Aug. 1, 2016
ISBN: 978-0-7278-8617-0
Page Count: 224
Publisher: Severn House
Review Posted Online: May 16, 2016
Kirkus Reviews Issue: June 1, 2016
Forget about solving all these crimes; the signal triumph here is (spoiler) the heroine’s survival.
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
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
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