Although the protagonist’s misery is understandable, it’s still a relief when she finally starts rising above it. If only...
A British art historian tries to prove the innocence of a young man she has every right to hate in this genre debut from hitherto pseudonymous Gray.
Grace Neville thinks she knows what heartbreak is when Archie, her husband of 13 years, leaves her for a younger woman. The safe, secure world she’s tried to build after her nomadic childhood vanishes in an instant. But after she struggles to rebuild it, the murder of her daughter, Tara, shatters her. Even the trial and conviction of Jordan Dukes, Tara’s hood of a boyfriend and presumptive killer, brings Grace no comfort or satisfaction. Nor does the alcohol she drinks to numb herself, the support of her bohemian mother and sister, a new hairdo, shopping expeditions in the quaintly named towns of Stow-on-the-Wold and Moreton-in-Marsh, or her sporadic work at an art gallery. The one person who gets past her wall of grief is Allan, Jordan’s father, who insists that his son didn't kill Tara. Against her family’s advice, Grace visits Jordan in prison and comes away willing to entertain a different theory. Her belief in the criminal justice system is undermined when she finds out that the police have been trying to bag Jordan for a long time and would have seized any excuse. Trying to find out the dirty secret that might have accounted for Tara’s increasingly moody and difficult behavior gives Grace a new purpose. But she’s still held back by her feelings for Archie, despite ever growing evidence of how weak, shallow, and selfish he is. Grace can’t stop loving him until a further betrayal makes even her begin to doubt him. Two unlikely white knights, a convenient coincidence, and a revelation from left field finally bring Grace more healing peace and acceptance than her readers are likely to enjoy.
Although the protagonist’s misery is understandable, it’s still a relief when she finally starts rising above it. If only she could do the same with the awkward plot.Pub Date: Dec. 8, 2016
ISBN: 978-0-7387-5022-4
Page Count: 384
Publisher: Midnight Books
Review Posted Online: Sept. 18, 2016
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Oct. 1, 2016
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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