THE INVISIBLE GUARDIAN

Name: THE INVISIBLE GUARDIAN
Author: Dolores Redondo
ISBN: 978-1-5011-0213-4

by Dolores Redondo ‧ RELEASE DATE: Nov. 20, 2015

Redondo introduces way too many named characters, many of whom are ultimately irrelevant; readers will need to keep a list...

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Set in the Spanish Basque country, Redondo’s novel explores a string of horrific murders and the rumors that swirl around them.

When the body of a young girl, Ainhoa Elizasu, is found murdered, Inspector Amaia Salazar is put on the case. The girl was discovered with her clothes cut open, pubic hair shaved, and a small, sweet cake placed upon her pubic mound. A second victim, much like the first except that an animal has eaten both the cake and the victim’s pubic area, is found, and Amaia is assigned to lead both investigations, which take place in the area where she grew up. Returning home, she faces her two sisters: Flora, the oldest, who runs the family bakery, and Rosaura, who left the bakery to get away from her controlling eldest sister. When a third girl is found dead, old wounds open, and Amaia—who grew up with an abusive mother—must manage to overcome local superstitions involving a basajuan, also known as the protector of the forest, a mythical creature some feel may be involved in the slayings. Amaia must also deal with her own trepidation at returning home. The most redeeming part of Redondo’s work is that it gives readers a rare glimpse into Basque culture and geography. But the book brims with long, dull soliloquies, endless examinations of Amaia's personal family drama, and distasteful descriptions of the murders. At one point, Amaia allows one of her sisters to taste a crumb of the cake found on one victim’s pubic area, and much of the police-procedural end of the investigation is weak: when things become very personal, for instance, Amaia continues to head the investigation, despite an obvious conflict of interest.

Redondo introduces way too many named characters, many of whom are ultimately irrelevant; readers will need to keep a list to figure out who’s who in this muddled thriller.

Pub Date: Nov. 20, 2015

ISBN: 978-1-5011-0213-4

Page Count: 384

Publisher: Atria

Review Posted Online: Dec. 15, 2015

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A CONSPIRACY OF BONES

by Kathy Reichs ‧ RELEASE DATE: March 17, 2020

Forget about solving all these crimes; the signal triumph here is (spoiler) the heroine’s survival.

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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

Categories:

- BOOK REVIEW
COLD, COLD BONES
by Kathy Reichs

- BOOK REVIEW
THE BONE CODE
by Kathy Reichs

- BOOK REVIEW
TWO NIGHTS
by Kathy Reichs

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THE WINNER

by David Baldacci ‧ RELEASE DATE: Dec. 2, 1997

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Irritatingly trite woman-in-periler from lawyer-turned-novelist Baldacci. Moving away from the White House and the white-shoe Washington law firms of his previous bestsellers (Absolute Power, 1996; Total Control, 1997), Baldacci comes up with LuAnn Tyler, a spunky, impossibly beautiful, white-trash truck stop waitress with a no-good husband and a terminally cute infant daughter in tow. Some months after the birth of Lisa, LuAnn gets a phone call summoning her to a make-shift office in an unrented storefront of the local shopping mall. There, she gets a Faustian offer from a Mr. Jackson, a monomaniacal, cross-dressing manipulator who apparently knows the winning numbers in the national lottery before the numbers are drawn. It seems that LuAnn fits the media profile of what a lottery winner should be—poor, undereducated but proud—and if she's willing to buy the right ticket at the right time and transfer most of her winnings to Jackson, she'll be able to retire in luxury. Jackson fails to inform her, however, that if she refuses his offer, he'll have her killed. Before that can happen, as luck would have it, LuAnn barely escapes death when one of husband Duane's drug deals goes bad. She hops on a first-class Amtrak sleeper to Manhattan with a hired executioner in pursuit. But executioner Charlie, one of Jackson's paid handlers, can't help but hear wedding bells when he sees LuAnn cooing with her daughter. Alas, a winning $100- million lottery drawing complicates things. Jackson spirits LuAnn and Lisa away to Sweden, with Charlie in pursuit. Never fear. Not only will LuAnn escape a series of increasingly violent predicaments, but she'll also outwit Jackson, pay an enormous tax bill to the IRS, and have enough left over to honeymoon in Switzerland. Too preposterous to work as feminine wish-fulfillment, too formulaic to be suspenseful. (Book-of-the-Month Club main selection)