Long but largely rewarding first thriller in which the apparent suicide of imprisoned Nazi Rudolf Hess sets the KGB, the Stasi, the CIA, Israelis, South Africans, and the Berlin police to chasing each other and some embarrassing papers—which may or may not have been written by Mr. Hess, who may or may not have been Mr. Hess. It's the late 80's, and the cracks in the Eastern bloc are just starting to show. Berlin is still controlled by the WW II Allied powers, who've spent millions to keep Hess locked up in Spandau Prison. It was Hess who made the mysterious flight to England at the beginning of the war, supposedly to seek a separate peace through negotiations with sympathetic aristocrats. Now, the prisoner has hung himself. Or has he? He's certainly dead, but it may have been murder. There has always been doubt about his identity—and the Russians have always been strangely adamant about paroling the old fascist. Then, as Spandau is being razed, Hans Apfel, a young German policeman, finds a hidden sheaf of papers written in Latin by the old prisoner, a document that, if released, will prove immensely embarrassing to a number of people, including the British royal family, a good hunk of the British aristocracy, and far too many German policemen on both sides of the Iron Curtain. A long line forms to try to get the papers back from Apfel, who wants to sell them, and his pretty wife Ilse, who wants to turn them in. Things become terribly violent terribly quickly, and Hans has to accept help from his estranged father, the best cop in Berlin.... The central mystery, why Hess went to England and why so many people don't want the truth to get out, isn't quite interesting enough to last the great length here. It's up to a few heroic, middle-aged policemen to hang onto the reader. They're usually successful.
Pub Date: May 6, 1993
ISBN: 0-525-93604-1
Page Count: 576
Publisher: Dutton
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 1, 1993
IN THE NEWS
A solid sense of place, a looming sense of menace: a frequently gripping read.
Veste’s moody procedural tells the story of a pair of Liverpool detectives tracking a killer influenced by local mythology.
Louise Henderson, the investigator at the heart of this novel, is a detective with secrets. She keeps some from her partner, DS Shipley; when the book opens, she’s also grappling with moments of sudden and inexplicable terror that leave her unsure of their origin and unsettled by their impact on her. Soon, the detectives take up the case of a woman who escaped a deadly attack—and who believes it was the work of the title character, a local legend who may be a murderer, a supernatural creature, or something else entirely. Not long after that, a dead body shows up, which suggests a connection to an earlier death, but a host of loose ends hang for the detectives to piece together—and there’s also the matter of a series of flashbacks set years earlier, when a teenager vanished. How these seemingly disparate elements connect—sometimes linearly, sometimes via well-made twists—leads the novel to its conclusion. Veste’s slow-burning approach works well, sustaining the sense of general wrongness that gives the narrative so much atmosphere. There are a few heavy-handed moments here and there. “They thought they knew evil. They had no idea” is perhaps the most flagrant example; as this book is either about a serial killer or an urban legend come to life, that sense of menace is already built in to the narrative well enough. But the conclusion is largely satisfying, playing well off the dynamics Veste established over the course of the story.
A solid sense of place, a looming sense of menace: a frequently gripping read.Pub Date: Feb. 5, 2019
ISBN: 978-1-4926-7129-9
Page Count: 416
Publisher: Sourcebooks Landmark
Review Posted Online: Nov. 12, 2018
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Dec. 1, 2018
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
Not this time, though. The fact-based mutilations are so outré you just know the answer’s going to be a letdown, and it...
Dead fish and game are only the appetizers for Warden Joe Pickett’s biggest problems in his fourth case.
It’s obvious that cavalier local fisherman Jeff O’Bannon is to blame for the fish floating belly-up in Crazy Woman Creek. But who’s killed the elk, excised the flesh from half his face, and dragged off his enormous carcass? Who’s killed 12 head of Don Hawkins’s cattle in exactly the same way? And has this slaughter of innocents been nothing more than preparation for the remarkably similar murders of ranch hand Tuff Montegue and water-engineering exec Stuart Tanner? Robey Hersig, the County Attorney heading the hastily assembled Northern Wyoming Murder and Mutilations Task Force, lists the likeliest causes: “BIRDS . . . CULTS . . . DISTURBED INDIVIDUALS . . . ARABS . . . GOVERNMENT AGENTS . . . GRIZZLY BEAR . . . ALIENS.” But Joe, skeptical of all these explanations, demands the right to investigate on his own. Even though his mortal enemy, Sheriff Bud Barnum, keeps reminding him he’s only a fish-and-game warden, nobody can deny that Joe’s pulled off some spectacular victories in the past (Winterkill, 2003, etc.).
Not this time, though. The fact-based mutilations are so outré you just know the answer’s going to be a letdown, and it is—even though Joe and his family sweat out suspenseful duels with a self-styled paranormal expert and a trusted neighbor.Pub Date: July 1, 2004
ISBN: 0-399-15200-8
Page Count: 384
Publisher: Putnam
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: June 1, 2004
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