A darkly tragic novel featuring a profoundly flawed antihero.
In Bird’s crime thriller, a down-and-out North Carolina cop with a drinking problem inhabits a world of dark menace and self-destruction.
Mike Lunsmann seemingly had it all, just four years prior to the opening of this grim meditation on midlife angst and alcoholism. Back then, he was a hotshot police detective in Craven County, North Carolina,with a wife who loved him and a son who didn’t yet think his dad was a total jerk. That was all washed away after Mike’s descent to the bottom of a Tennessee whiskey bottle. Now he’s a beat cop, and things take a nasty turn when he has a particularly ugly encounter with his family; if he had any hope of repairing their relationship, it’s now effectively gone. Still guided by the “Little Man” in his head “pulling all the wrong levers,” Mike is shot during another alcohol-soaked foray into the night. Awakening in a hospital bed two days later, Mike learns that the gunshot to his arm could have easily killed him. Friendly physician Harold Lasky tells him point-blank that if he doesn’t quit boozing, he’ll die. Sadly for Mike, there are even more immediate threats to his life, because the rifle bullet that pierced his arm just happens to place him in the middle of heinous murder mystery involving four teenagers. The killer’s still out there, and Mike is no shape to track them down. Still, he’s got to try. Over the course of this novel, Bird’s troubled protagonist is beset by demons from within and without. The only question is: Which is worse? That central dilemma helps to propel Bird’s drama forward. Along the way, the author packs his prose with plenty of gumshoe grit: “Next morning Mike awoke with a jackhammer headache and the taste of vomit still fresh at the back of his throat. For a long time he lay still beneath the covers, struggling to arrange whatever happened the night before into some kind of orderly account.” However, it’s his preoccupation with the complexities of his protagonist’s psychological struggles that make this thriller stand out from the pack.
A darkly tragic novel featuring a profoundly flawed antihero.Pub Date: April 5, 2022
ISBN: 9798989198047
Page Count: 320
Publisher: Piper House
Review Posted Online: Aug. 27, 2024
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
Even when King is not at his best, he’s still good.
Two killers are on the loose. Can they be stopped?
In this ambitious mystery, the prolific and popular King tells the story of a serial murderer who pledges, in a note to Buckeye City police, to kill “13 innocents and 1 guilty,” in order, we eventually learn, to avenge the death of a man who was framed and convicted for possession of child pornography and then killed in prison. At the same time, the author weaves in the efforts of another would-be murderer, a member of a violently abortion-opposing church who has been stalking a popular feminist author and women’s rights activist on a publicity tour. To tell these twin tales of murders done and intended, King summons some familiar characters, including private investigator Holly Gibney, whom readers may recall from previous novels. Gibney is enlisted to help Buckeye City police detective Izzy Jaynes try to identify and stop the serial killer, who has been murdering random unlucky citizens with chilling efficiency. She’s also been hired as a bodyguard for author and activist Kate McKay and her young assistant. The author succeeds in grabbing the reader’s interest and holding it throughout this page-turning tale of terror, which reads like a big-screen thriller. The action is well paced, the settings are vividly drawn, and King’s choice to focus on the real and deadly dangers of extremist thought is admirable. But the book is hamstrung by cliched characters, hackneyed dialogue (both spoken and internal), and motives that feel both convoluted and overly simplistic. King shines brightest when he gets to the heart of our darkest fears and desires, but here the dangers seem a bit cerebral. In his warning letter to the police, the serial killer wonders if his cryptic rationale to murder will make sense to others, concluding, “It does to me, and that is enough.” Is it enough? In another writer’s work, it might not be, but in King’s skilled hands, it probably is.
Even when King is not at his best, he’s still good.Pub Date: May 27, 2025
ISBN: 9781668089330
Page Count: 448
Publisher: Scribner
Review Posted Online: Feb. 1, 2025
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 1, 2025
As the prosecutor sadly observes: “All this because of a dead buffalo.”
Idyllic Catalina Island turns out to be just as crime infested as the rest of Los Angeles County in the latest series launch by the creator of Harry Bosch, Renée Ballard, and the Lincoln Lawyer.
Det. Sgt. Stilwell has been bounced off the county homicide squad and rusticized to Catalina, where the exclusive Black Marlin Club won’t admit even four-term Avalon Mayor Doug Allen to full membership and the most serious infraction seems to be the killing and cutting up of a buffalo, presumably by Henry Gaston, who operates Island Mystery Tours when he’s not threatening endangered species. All that changes with the discovery of a body sunk in the surrounding waters. The corpse, most recognizable by its streak of purple hair, is that of Leigh-Anne Moss, a Black Marlin server recently fired for fraternizing with members and guests she sees as potential sugar daddies. Stilwell is sufficiently invested in her murder to compete vigorously over jurisdiction with Rex Ahearn, the LA County homicide detective who kept his job when Stilwell lost his. Their rivalry, fueled by mutual contempt, is only the first hint that Stilwell will end up fighting his counterparts in law enforcement and local government at least as hard as he fights crooks like hit man Merris Spivak and Oscar “Baby Head” Terranova, Henry’s boss, who comes under sharper scrutiny when Henry disappears and ends up dead himself. Connelly handles his hero’s obligatory romance with assistant harbormaster Tash Dano and his increasingly wary alliance with assistant D.A. Monika Juarez with equal professionalism, and if the wrap-up leaves some loose ends dangling, well, that’s what franchises are for.
As the prosecutor sadly observes: “All this because of a dead buffalo.”Pub Date: May 20, 2025
ISBN: 9780316588485
Page Count: 352
Publisher: Little, Brown
Review Posted Online: April 19, 2025
Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 15, 2025
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