A clever tale of cops whose entertaining rivalry is both affecting and conducive to solving murders.
The case of a media mogul who goes inexplicably missing from her own yacht turns into a murder investigation for two New York City detectives in Chadwell’s debut thriller.
The fact that Detective Gigi Mirabelli still has two months of maternity leave to go doesn’t stop her godfather, Chief of Detectives Jimmy Frail, from throwing a case her way. But it’s a high-profile one: multimillionaire media mogul Connie Ross has vanished during a yacht party, and Mirabelli specializes in missing persons cases. Frail pairs her with homicide cop Harry Burns, and the two butt heads almost immediately. Mirabelli hopes to remain lead detective as long as she can until they’re certain that someone actually killed Connie, while Burns is looking to declare it a murder as soon as possible. Unfortunately, pinpointing the people who’d want to kill Connie isn’t so simple. Her fiance, Tre Langston, for one, is upset that she kissed her former lover onstage as a reputed publicity stunt, and she’d also just fired Sandra Spencer, the executive producer of The Connie Ross Show. The investigation changes direction when two people with connections to Connie die, one by subway train and the other after falling from an apartment window. The detectives realize that they must find common ground in order to stop a potential serial killer. What begins as a standard cop story gradually turns into an intricate mystery. Chadwell packs her tale with suspects and doesn’t provide overwhelming evidence that makes it easy for the police to unmask the killer. Mirabelli and Burns constantly rehash their theories, and their combative nature further complicates matters, even if readers know Connie’s fate right away. Burns is the quintessential cop character—borderline alcoholic, broken family—but Mirabelli has hurdles of her own, including an unhelpful husband and a mother-in-law who thinks she should stay at home. The novel is at its finest when the detectives interview people with rapid-fire questions until shocking information is revealed. It’s fitting that the duo, at one point, flip a coin to decide who gets to interrogate a particularly dubious person.
A clever tale of cops whose entertaining rivalry is both affecting and conducive to solving murders.Pub Date: Jan. 24, 2016
ISBN: N/A
Page Count: 290
Publisher: Jaffa Books
Review Posted Online: Aug. 22, 2016
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
A tasty, if not always tasteful, tale of supernatural mayhem that fans of King and Crichton alike will enjoy.
Are we not men? We are—well, ask Bigfoot, as Brooks does in this delightful yarn, following on his bestseller World War Z(2006).
A zombie apocalypse is one thing. A volcanic eruption is quite another, for, as the journalist who does a framing voice-over narration for Brooks’ latest puts it, when Mount Rainier popped its cork, “it was the psychological aspect, the hyperbole-fueled hysteria that had ended up killing the most people.” Maybe, but the sasquatches whom the volcano displaced contributed to the statistics, too, if only out of self-defense. Brooks places the epicenter of the Bigfoot war in a high-tech hideaway populated by the kind of people you might find in a Jurassic Park franchise: the schmo who doesn’t know how to do much of anything but tries anyway, the well-intentioned bleeding heart, the know-it-all intellectual who turns out to know the wrong things, the immigrant with a tough backstory and an instinct for survival. Indeed, the novel does double duty as a survival manual, packed full of good advice—for instance, try not to get wounded, for “injury turns you from a giver to a taker. Taking up our resources, our time to care for you.” Brooks presents a case for making room for Bigfoot in the world while peppering his narrative with timely social criticism about bad behavior on the human side of the conflict: The explosion of Rainier might have been better forecast had the president not slashed the budget of the U.S. Geological Survey, leading to “immediate suspension of the National Volcano Early Warning System,” and there’s always someone around looking to monetize the natural disaster and the sasquatch-y onslaught that follows. Brooks is a pro at building suspense even if it plays out in some rather spectacularly yucky episodes, one involving a short spear that takes its name from “the sucking sound of pulling it out of the dead man’s heart and lungs.” Grossness aside, it puts you right there on the scene.
A tasty, if not always tasteful, tale of supernatural mayhem that fans of King and Crichton alike will enjoy.Pub Date: June 16, 2020
ISBN: 978-1-9848-2678-7
Page Count: 304
Publisher: Del Rey/Ballantine
Review Posted Online: Feb. 9, 2020
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 1, 2020
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK TO SCREEN
An author to watch, Buehlman is now two for two in delivering eerie, offbeat novels with admirable literary skill.
Cormac McCarthy's The Road meets Chaucer's Canterbury Tales in this frightful medieval epic about an orphan girl with visionary powers in plague-devastated France.
The year is 1348. The conflict between France and England is nothing compared to the all-out war building between good angels and fallen ones for control of heaven (though a scene in which soldiers are massacred by a rainbow of arrows is pretty horrific). Among mortals, only the girl, Delphine, knows of the cataclysm to come. Angels speak to her, issuing warnings—and a command to run. A pack of thieves is about to carry her off and rape her when she is saved by a disgraced knight, Thomas, with whom she teams on a march across the parched landscape. Survivors desperate for food have made donkey a delicacy and don't mind eating human flesh. The few healthy people left lock themselves in, not wanting to risk contact with strangers, no matter how dire the strangers' needs. To venture out at night is suicidal: Horrific forces swirl about, ravaging living forms. Lethal black clouds, tentacled water creatures and assorted monsters are comfortable in the daylight hours as well. The knight and a third fellow journeyer, a priest, have difficulty believing Delphine's visions are real, but with oblivion lurking in every shadow, they don't have any choice but to trust her. The question becomes, can she trust herself? Buehlman, who drew upon his love of Fitzgerald and Hemingway in his acclaimed Southern horror novel, Those Across the River (2011), slips effortlessly into a different kind of literary sensibility, one that doesn't scrimp on earthy humor and lyrical writing in the face of unspeakable horrors. The power of suggestion is the author's strong suit, along with first-rate storytelling talent.
An author to watch, Buehlman is now two for two in delivering eerie, offbeat novels with admirable literary skill.Pub Date: Oct. 2, 2012
ISBN: 978-1-937007-86-7
Page Count: 432
Publisher: Ace/Berkley
Review Posted Online: Sept. 1, 2012
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 15, 2012
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