Lock and the mystery have little impact, but they’re surrounded by colorful characters and regaling tales.
In Baum’s (Point and Shoot, 2006) latest thriller, private eye and bodyguard Lock Tourmaline returns to solve the murder of a client’s brother, killed in prison.
When inmate Jason Heung’s burned body turns up in a prison dumpster, Lock agrees to find the person(s) responsible. After all, he heads the security detail for Jason’s sister, Susan, whose fiance, Henry Cho, is Lock’s old cop buddy. Notorious criminal Cousin Bodacious is the immediate suspect since, it seems, Jason was informing on him to the police. But others, like Bodacious’ employee Len LeFontant, suggest that Susan is behind the murder, and for the same reason. Her brother would have buckets of dirt if the speculation of the Heung family’s ties to drug distribution were true. Lock’s PI skills help with his investigation, but it’ll take much more to protect himself and loved ones from Bodacious’ cronies and Kim Jaegyu, a suspicious Korean also looking into Jason’s death. But Lock, a practitioner of Shaolin Kempo karate—which derives techniques from other styles such as traditional karate and jujitsu—and other martial arts, is most certainly capable. Mixing mystery and thriller, the plot has shades of drama, romance for Lock, and humor mostly from Len, so over-the-top offensive that it’s comical. Lock’s trying to wrangle homemade porn DVDs—starring his ex-wife Lori—from Len is its own subplot. Lock is all over the place, both professionally (detective, former cop, bodyguard, martial arts instructor) and personally (a widower with a girlfriend and another potential love interest). But he and the murder mystery are unfortunately some of the least interesting aspects of the book. He’s overshadowed by terrific stories involving Lori’s dilemma and Lock’s elderly teacher, who sleeps 20 hours a day and is close to death. Supporting characters are likewise fascinating, particularly scene-stealer Len; Lock’s 19-year-old stepdaughter, Bette, who teaches his classes for him; and even Bodacious, whose influence is evident despite his never appearing in the storyline. The book ends with a stunner, ensuring that a third mystery is on its way.
Lock and the mystery have little impact, but they’re surrounded by colorful characters and regaling tales.Pub Date: Nov. 25, 2014
ISBN: 978-1494744328
Page Count: 266
Publisher: CreateSpace
Review Posted Online: April 9, 2015
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
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
Proficient but eminently predictable. Amid all the time shifts and embedded backstories, the most surprising feature is how...
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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