Although Carpenter and Kaminska may not be the finest detectives, they’re easy to fall in love with, and readers will likely...
A cold case has ties to a murder for hire and a possible terrorist attack in Wensley’s (Text: Murder, 2011, etc.) latest thriller featuring DI Carpenter and DS Kaminska.
The U.K. Special Branch Police have already arrested Ilse Chemnitz’s killer, but they’re still looking for Dragor, the Serbian gangster who ordered the hit. The National Criminal Intelligence Service sends Colour Sgt. Marco Richmond to investigate Dragor’s connection to a military site bombing in Kent, England, and he discovers a DNA match that links the Serbian to the body of a Jane Doe found dead several years earlier, thought to be Dragor’s daughter. In the course of the murder investigation, the police suspect that the British royal family may be in terrorists’ cross hairs. This novel, like the first in the series, has elements of a murder mystery—the killer’s identity isn’t revealed until the end—but doesn’t spend much time on the investigation itself. Carpenter and Kaminska work the murder case, but Xian, the forensics tech, contributes the most useful information: Her DNA testing reopens the cold case and ultimately solves it. But Carpenter’s and Kaminska’s scenes, even when they have little to do with the overall mystery, are indelible; a chase sequence after Kaminska recognizes a Polish fugitive, for example, is exhilarating. He also includes subtle hints of a developing romance. Still, the book’s shining moments are those that combine different characters’ story arcs: Carpenter and Dragor, for example, call a temporary truce so that the policeman can ask the gangster questions about his daughter. In another exciting scene, police try to protect the royal family during the 2012 London Olympics. Overall, the novel is a quick, easy read, and the author keeps the ending open for the final book in the planned trilogy.
Although Carpenter and Kaminska may not be the finest detectives, they’re easy to fall in love with, and readers will likely want more of their adventures.Pub Date: March 7, 2013
ISBN: 978-1481785877
Page Count: 154
Publisher: AuthorHouse
Review Posted Online: Feb. 28, 2014
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
BOOK REVIEW
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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