Kelly’s series style (Enforcing the Paw, 2017, etc.) of presenting chapters in alternating voices gives readers a chance to...
A message sewn in an abandoned newborn’s blanket appears to be a cry for help, but a local police officer determined to investigate isn’t sure where to start.
Fort Worth Police Officer Megan Luz wonders at first why her boyfriend, Seth, has called her down to the fire station where he works. It turns out that Seth has something of interest to Megan both personally and professionally: a baby someone dropped off at the station in accordance with the Texas Safe Haven Statute, which promises that parents can drop off newborns without legal sanctions. Megan isn’t so sure that the man who dropped off the newborn is the father, especially when she finds the small word “help” stitched into the baby’s blanket. Though Megan, who aspires to be a detective, wants to investigate, she’s not sure what she’s looking for. Luckily, the blanket holds another clue in the form of a mysterious symbol that connects the newborn to the local community People of Peace, and Megan and Detective Audrey Jackson start their inquiries by asking questions there. Though the People of Peace may claim to be peaceful, they certainly aren’t interested in answering questions, especially not when Megan and her K-9 partner, Brigit, seek to gain access to the compound. As Megan’s story unfolds, her chapters are interspersed with those focused on Juliette, a cult member forced to give up her baby and told by the leaders that the child has died. While Juliette struggles to escape, Megan works to stay strong and trust her gut even when the evidence isn’t in her favor. With Brigit’s help, Seth’s support, and her own ingenuity, Megan is determined to save the day.
Kelly’s series style (Enforcing the Paw, 2017, etc.) of presenting chapters in alternating voices gives readers a chance to experience the icky cult setting, the heroine’s warm albeit square side, and the full-on silliness of Brigit’s canine voice.Pub Date: Oct. 30, 2018
ISBN: 978-1-250-19735-1
Page Count: 368
Publisher: St. Martin's
Review Posted Online: Aug. 20, 2018
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 1, 2018
Sports agent Myron Bolitar is free, white, and well over 21, so there’s no reason he shouldn’t drop everything at a moment’s notice to go on a Caribbean idyll with CNN anchor Terese Collins. But he pays a high price for his three weeks of quality sex. When he returns, his partner, Esperanza Diaz, is gone from their New York office, arrested for the murder of their client Clu Haid. The aging Yankee pitcher had fought with Esperanza just days after failing a drug test and trying to track Myron down to warn him about some obscure danger. Now that Myron’s friend Win Lockwood, who managed the securities account Clu had just withdrawn $200,000 from, has dragged him home, Esperanza refuses to talk to him; her lawyer tells him to take a hike; and Frank Ache, Jr., the mob scion whose agency has been poaching Myron’s clients in his absence, doesn’t want him poking around in the case either. No matter: Myron’s off and running on an exhilarating trail that’ll take him from a transsexual bar called Take A Chance, where you never know whether the bouncers beating you up are really men or not, all the way back in time to an episode from his own past that he’d like to forget. These adventures are greased by a thousand wisecracks, many of them funny and none of them developing the plot or deepening the characters. The crackerjack mystery itself does that: as in One False Move (1998), Myron is as skilled at solving puzzles as his creator is at devising them. Somebody should tell the guy he doesn’t need all the putdowns to shine like a star.
Pub Date: June 11, 1999
ISBN: 0-385-32371-9
Page Count: 320
Publisher: Delacorte
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 1, 2000
A quadriplegic criminalist hunts the most elusive quarry of his career: a serial killer who leaves clues at each crime scene allowing the cops to head off the next murder—if they can decode them in time. With nothing left to live for since an accident ended his forensic career and his marriage, bearish Lincoln Rhyme has made an appointment with Dr. William Berger, of the suicide-friendly Lethe Society. But Rhyme's old NYPD colleague, Det. Lon Sellitto, just happens to breeze in, uninvited and unwelcome, minutes before Berger does, and talks Rhyme out of suicide and into spearheading the hunt for Unsub 823, the demonic cabbie whose fares often face nightmarish scenarios of torture and death. Though he shows no mercy to his victims, Unsub 823 obligingly salts each crime scene with cryptic clues to his next, clues that whet Rhyme's jaundiced appetite and give him the hope of saving currency trader T.J. Colfax, German emigrÇe Monelle Gerger, elderly William Everett, and widowed Carole Ganz and her daughter. It's not long before Rhyme's blood is pumping again, and he's persuaded beautiful Amelia Sachs, the Major Crimes officer who preserved the first crime scene long enough to gather a few precious scraps of evidence, to put off her medical transfer to Public Affairs and become his eyes, ears, and nose at each gory scene. Working feverishly against a series of impossible deadlines, Sachs and Rhyme piece together a profile of the perp's appearance, his lodgings, his car, his habits, and the idÇe fixe that drives him: He believes he's the Bone Collector, a demented ghoul who preyed on New York's dead and near-dead at the turn of the century, determined to free his victims from this mortal coil by stripping them to ageless bone. Deaver (A Maiden's Grave, 1995, etc.) marries forensic work that would do Patricia Cornwell proud to a turbocharged plot that puts Benzedrine to shame. (First printing of 100,000; film rights to Universal; $100,000 ad/promo)
Pub Date: March 1, 1997
ISBN: 0-670-86871-X
Page Count: 400
Publisher: Viking
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Dec. 15, 1996
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