by Elizabeth Carroll ‧ RELEASE DATE: May 7, 2012
A gripping page-turner with ample suspense despite its flaws.
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A grisly double murder in a California mansion upends one woman’s quiet family life.
Carroll’s debut thriller opens with a bang: Two murder victims narrate their own deaths. Kristina Jecawski and New Zealand rugby player Donny McKenna are found murdered at Kristina’s California mansion with no leads other than an abusive ex-husband and some bloody footprints (early pages recall the Nicole Brown Simpson and Ronald Goldman murders). Next-door neighbor Julianne Macnair, pediatrician and wife of a successful property developer, arrives home with her son, Teddie, and steps into a pool of blood—it’s the first sign that her life will be completely turned upside down. Carroll takes readers on a whirlwind ride through Julianne’s life, from her somewhat difficult marriage to Simon to her fulfilling job at a clinic, from her college days in Washington to her current life as the mother of two sons and a stillborn baby. As Julianne’s life expands, she becomes a foil for Kristina, a mother with endless male suitors and multiple plastic surgeries. Carroll also attempts to tie in unsolved murders in the Pacific Northwest, but the move seems forced. Each of the major (and some of the minor) characters gets a chance to narrate the book—Julianne, Kristina, Simon, Kristina’s ex-husband, members of the police force and the doctor at Julianne’s clinic. While the device serves to quickly draw readers in, it loses steam since all of the voices sound the same. Carroll solidly characterizes Kristina and Julianne, but while she provides many details for the other characters, none of them has a strong voice. Carroll is a pediatric physician, so the medical aspects of the book stand out, although the ending isn’t exactly surprising.
A gripping page-turner with ample suspense despite its flaws.Pub Date: May 7, 2012
ISBN: 978-0-956079527
Page Count: 212
Publisher: Wordsmith Press
Review Posted Online: July 19, 2012
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
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by Kathy Reichs ‧ RELEASE DATE: March 17, 2020
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
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by C.J. Box ‧ RELEASE DATE: July 28, 2015
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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