While dealing with family issues, personal demons and office politics, Special Agent Jake Shaunessey and fellow Drug Enforcement Administration agents try to track down the elusive kingpins of a Minneapolis-area heroin network.
The characters in Nelson’s first novel might be found on an action-packed cop show: hard-boiled, hyperdedicated good guys vs. diabolical bad guys with no redeeming qualities. In a conversational style, Nelson—himself a DEA veteran—writes with the banter and gallows humor of men and women who constantly face danger: One of Jake’s co-workers “could handle herself quite well in the office, thank you.” (If anything, the good guys might be a little too good.) The agents pursue a series of leads from sketchy informants, conduct dangerous raids, sustain casualties and flip small-time dealers in an uphill battle through the drug ring’s chain of command. Along the way, the agents’ dedication earns them problems with spouses and censure from their boss, Alan Ravich, a self-interested political animal. The other side of the crime coin is inhabited by a number of lowlife, conscience-free dirtbags. Top kingpin Big Al not only heads the drug ring, but keeps his minions in line via a satanic cult, conducting hallucinogen-fueled ceremonies in which young kidnapped girls are sacrificed: “Phantoms embraced the physical features of Al. Some saw horns on Al’s head. Some envisioned him with a long tail.” In fact, some of the bad guys make more interesting characters than the agents. For instance, Big Al’s psychology degree enables him to control fragile personalities. Tanya, his psychotic sidekick who’s fond of slitting throats, has dual dominant/submissive personalities; Big Al manipulates her by taking advantage of her daddy issues. Eddie, a drug importer, demonstrates a hint of conscience that comes into play at the end; and then there are the twins, Lonnie and Donnie, incompetent junky burglars whose antics lend dark comic relief. When things finally fall into place for the agents, the action ramps up to an exciting, satisfying denouement. Hits all the targets for fans of police drama.
Pub Date: April 26, 2013
ISBN: 978-1-4825-6116-6
Page Count: 304
Publisher: CreateSpace
Review Posted Online: March 18, 2014
Kirkus Reviews Issue: April 15, 2014
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
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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