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LITTLE BOY BLUE

NYPD Detectives Anthony Ryan and Joe Gregory spend from Thanksgiving to Christmas trying to trace the loot from a botched airport robbery. The robbery, though it netted an estimated $3 million for the thieves, didn't go off as routinely as the crooks had expected; it was interrupted by air cargo handler Johnny Boy Counihan, whose bad timing in bursting in on the thieves, coupled with his mistake in wearing his retired father's old police jacket, cost him his life. Now Gregory, who was J.C. Counihan's partner before the old man retired, wants in on the case. Unfortunately, so does Johnny's grandfather, Vito Martucci. He's convinced that the brain behind the heist was Emil Lutz, the acknowledged king of airport crime, released from jail only three weeks before the robbery. And Martucci, though he's old enough to have voted for Harry Truman, is a loose cannon who makes legendary cowboy Gregory look positively restrained. In short order, Emil's number-two son, Rocky, is found in an airport parking lot, dead. Then Emil's cocktail lounge is firebombed. As the cops console Johnny's mother and ride around town swapping info with his obsessive grandfather, Ryan wonders if they have targeted the right guys, and if this spate of violence is Martucci's idea of investigative work—or the work of one of the thieves trying to protect himself against informants and beef up his share of the pot at the same time. Prowling a jungle of wiseguys, terrorists, two-bit stoolies, and sad mob wives, the hunters set a trap for their leading suspect; but the trigger- man's identity will catch them both off-guard. Though Dee's third lacks the dark complexity and furious energy of Bronx Angel (1995)—even the electricity between Ryan and Gregory seems strangely muted—the narrative is still quick, quirky, and ruminative, larded with knowing opinions about everything from cop bars to the Verrazano-Narrows Bridge.

Pub Date: Feb. 6, 1997

ISBN: 0-446-52038-1

Page Count: 288

Publisher: N/A

Review Posted Online: June 24, 2010

Kirkus Reviews Issue: Nov. 1, 1996

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THE A LIST

Proficient but eminently predictable. Amid all the time shifts and embedded backstories, the most surprising feature is how...

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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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A KILLER EDITION

An anodyne visit with Tricia and her friends and enemies hung on a thin mystery.

Too much free time leads a New Hampshire bookseller into yet another case of murder.

Now that Tricia Miles has Pixie Poe and Mr. Everett practically running her bookstore, Haven’t Got a Clue, she finds herself at loose ends. Her wealthy sister, Angelica, who in the guise of Nigela Ricita has invested heavily in making Stoneham a bookish tourist attraction, is entering the amateur competition for the Great Booktown Bake-Off. So Tricia, who’s recently taken up baking as a hobby, decides to join her and spends a lot of time looking for the perfect cupcake recipe. A visit to another bookstore leaves Tricia witnessing a nasty argument between owner Joyce Widman and next-door neighbor Vera Olson over the trimming of tree branches that hang over Joyce’s yard—also overheard by new town police officer Cindy Pearson. After Tricia accepts Joyce’s offer of some produce from her garden, they find Vera skewered by a pitchfork, and when Police Chief Grant Baker arrives, Joyce is his obvious suspect. Ever since Tricia moved to Stoneham, the homicide rate has skyrocketed (Poisoned Pages, 2018, etc.), and her history with Baker is fraught. She’s also become suspicious about the activities at Pets-A-Plenty, the animal shelter where Vera was a dedicated volunteer. Tricia’s offered her expertise to the board, but president Toby Kingston has been less than welcoming. With nothing but baking on her calendar, Tricia has plenty of time to investigate both the murder and her vague suspicions about the shelter. Plenty of small-town friendships and rivalries emerge in her quest for the truth.

An anodyne visit with Tricia and her friends and enemies hung on a thin mystery.

Pub Date: Aug. 13, 2019

ISBN: 978-1-9848-0272-9

Page Count: 320

Publisher: Berkley

Review Posted Online: May 26, 2019

Kirkus Reviews Issue: June 15, 2019

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