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
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
Proficient but eminently predictable. Amid all the time shifts and embedded backstories, the most surprising feature is how...
A convicted killer’s list of five people he wants dead runs the gamut from the wife he’s already had murdered to franchise heroine Ali Reynolds.
Back in the day, women came from all over to consult Santa Clarita fertility specialist Dr. Edward Gilchrist. Many of them left his care happily pregnant, never dreaming that the father of the babies they carried was none other than the physician himself, who donated his own sperm rather than that of the handsome, athletic, disease-free men pictured in his scrapbook. When Alexandra Munsey’s son, Evan, is laid low by the kidney disease he’s inherited from his biological father and she returns to Gilchrist in search of the donor’s medical records, the roof begins to fall in on him. By the time it’s done falling, he’s serving a life sentence in Folsom Prison for commissioning the death of his wife, Dawn, the former nurse and sometime egg donor who’d turned on him. With nothing left to lose, Gilchrist tattoos himself with the initials of five people he blames for his fall: Dawn; Leo Manuel Aurelio, the hit man he’d hired to dispose of her; Kaitlyn Todd, the nurse/receptionist who took Dawn’s place; Alex Munsey, whose search for records upset his apple cart; and Ali Reynolds, the TV reporter who’d helped put Alex in touch with the dozen other women who formed the Progeny Project because their children looked just like hers. No matter that Ali’s been out of both California and the news business for years; Gilchrist and his enablers know that revenge can’t possibly be served too cold. Wonder how far down that list they’ll get before Ali, aided once more by Frigg, the methodical but loose-cannon AI first introduced in Duel to the Death (2018), turns on them?
Proficient but eminently predictable. Amid all the time shifts and embedded backstories, the most surprising feature is how little the boundary-challenged AI, who gets into the case more or less inadvertently, differs from your standard human sidekick with issues.Pub Date: April 2, 2019
ISBN: 978-1-5011-5101-9
Page Count: 352
Publisher: Gallery Books/Simon & Schuster
Review Posted Online: Feb. 18, 2019
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 1, 2019
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