An ambitious and often engaging, if imperfect, mystery.
Investigator Jon Frederick pursues a cold case involving a grieving cop in Weber’s sixth crime novel in a series.
It’s 2013, and 25-year-oldBlack Minneapolis police officer Zave Williams is off-duty. While trying to buy eggs, he meets a crying 19-year-old, White grocery store employee named Sadie Sullivan. It turns out that she’s engaged, but she’s having doubts about marrying her boyfriend, who’s also a cop, although Zave doesn’t know him. Zave and Sadie quickly become friends; there’s clear romantic chemistry between them, although when it becomes evident that Sadie can’t be talked out of marrying her fiance, Zave gives her space. Not long afterward, Sadie is found dead in the woods outside the city, and a Black boxer with gang affiliations and two previous sexual assault charges is arrested for her rape and murder. Zave is present for the arrest, but it doesn’t dull the pain he feels over Sadie’s killing. As years pass, however, the boxer appeals the conviction, and serous questions are raised about his guilt. One suspicious observer is Jon Frederick, a White agent for the Bureau of Criminal Apprehension, who suspects, due to details of the crime scene, that a cop killed Sadie. Before long, he reopens the long-closed case and looks at Zave as a potential suspect. Weber’s energetic prose captures the fixations of his characters and effectively charts their development over the course of almost a decade, as when Sadie pops into Zave’s mind eight years after her death: “I’d had this nagging shame over Sadie’s death eating at me, lately. Was there something I could’ve said to her that would have changed her outcome?” Some of the attempts to tie in topical issues of police brutality and civil unrest feel a little forced, as do quotations from famous Black writers that begin each chapter. The identity of the ultimate culprit isn’t too great of a mystery, but Weber largely succeeds at demonstrating how issues of race and policing are intricately entangled.
An ambitious and often engaging, if imperfect, mystery.Pub Date: N/A
ISBN: N/A
Page Count: 433
Publisher: Manuscript
Review Posted Online: Jan. 4, 2022
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
BOOK REVIEW
One of those rare triple-deckers that’s actually worth every page, every complication, every bead of sweat.
A routine break-in at the home of Sûreté homicide chief Armand Gamache leads slowly but surely to the revelation of a potentially calamitous threat to all Québec.
At first it seems as if nothing at all triggered the burglar alarm at Gamache’s home in Three Pines; it was literally a false alarm. It’s not till he receives a package containing his summer jacket that Gamache realizes someone really did get into his house, choosing to steal exactly this one item and return it with a cryptic note referring to “some malady…water” and “Angelica stems.” Having already refused to meet with Jeanne Caron, chief of staff to Marcus Lauzon, a powerful politician who’s already taken vengeance on Gamache and his family for not expunging his child’s criminal record, Gamache now agrees to meet with Charles Langlois, a marine biologist with ties to Caron who confesses to a leading role in stealing Gamache’s jacket. Their meeting ends inconclusively for Gamache, who’s convinced that Langlois is hiding something weighty, and all too conclusively for Langlois, who’s killed by a hit-and-run driver as he leaves. The news that Langlois had been investigating a water supply near the abbey of Saint-Gilbert-Entre-les-Loups sends Gamache scurrying off to the abbey, where the plot steadily thickens until he’s led to ask how “an old recipe for Chartreuse” can possibly be connected to “a terrorist plot to poison Québec’s drinking water.” That’s a great question, and answering it will take the second half of this story, which spins ever more intricate connections among leading players that become deeply unsettling.
One of those rare triple-deckers that’s actually worth every page, every complication, every bead of sweat.Pub Date: Oct. 29, 2024
ISBN: 9781250328137
Page Count: 432
Publisher: Minotaur
Review Posted Online: July 19, 2024
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 15, 2024
Fine Grisham storytelling that his fans will enjoy.
A descendant of enslaved people fights a Florida developer over the future of a small island.
In 1760, the slave ship Venus breaks apart in a storm on its way to Savannah, and only a few survivors, all Africans, find their way safely to a tiny barrier island between Florida and Georgia. For two centuries, only formerly enslaved people and their descendants live there. A curse on white people hangs over the island, and none who ever set foot on it survive. Its last resident was Lovely Jackson, who departed as a teen in 1955. Today—well, in 2020—a developer called Tidal Breeze wants Florida’s permission to “develop” Dark Isle, which sits within bridge-building distance from the well-established Camino Island. The plot is an easy setup for Grisham, big people vs. little people. Lovely’s revered ancestors are buried on Dark Isle, which Hurricane Leo devastated from end to end. Lovely claims the islet’s ownership despite not having formal title, and she wants white folks to leave the place alone. But apparently Florida doesn’t have enough casinos and golf courses to suit some people. Surely developers can buy off that little old Black lady with a half million bucks. No? How about a million? “I wish they’d stop offering money,” Lovely complains. “I ain’t for sale.” Thus a non-jury court trial begins to establish ownership. The story has no legal fireworks, just ordinary maneuvering. The real fun is in the backstory, in the portrayal of the aptly named Lovely, and the skittishness of white people to step on the island as long as the ancient curse remains. Lovely has self-published a history of the island, and a sympathetic white woman named Mercer Mann decides to write a nonfiction account as well. When that book ultimately comes out, reviewers for Kirkus (and others) “raved on and on.” Don’t expect stunning twists, though early on Dark Isle gives four white guys a stark message. The tension ends with the judge’s verdict, but the remaining 30 pages bring the story to a satisfying conclusion.
Fine Grisham storytelling that his fans will enjoy.Pub Date: May 28, 2024
ISBN: 9780385545990
Page Count: 304
Publisher: Doubleday
Review Posted Online: March 23, 2024
Kirkus Reviews Issue: April 15, 2024
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