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THE DEVIL'S TRIANGLE

Despite an overlong last act, Owen produces another grim, tightly woven, and resolutely professional piece of work with a...

Richmond reporter Willie Black’s sixth adventure kicks off when one of his favorite watering holes becomes the site of a truly epic brush with the law.

The Dark Star is the favored spot for the attorneys of Bartley, Bowman and Bush to celebrate happy hour each Friday, and that’s who’s sitting around the bar when a twin-engine Beechcraft comes through the front window to make an unscheduled landing. What’s not to like about 22 dead lawyers? Well, one of them is Greg Ellis, the estranged husband of Willie’s third wife, Kate, and Cindy Peroni, Willie’s current squeeze, isn’t happy to see her man comforting his ex. More to the point, what looked at first like a horrible accident soon shows signs of being altogether more sinister. David Biggio, the man at the controls of the Beechcraft, had stolen it from his landlord, James "Chopper" Ware, such a short time before the crash that Willie suspects he had a deep-laid plan—a suspicion that hardens into near certainty with the news that, first, Biggio took out a $500,000 insurance policy payable to his 12-year-old daughter, Brandy, only two weeks ago, and, second, Thomas Jackson Bonesteel, the ambulance chaser who got Biggio’s ex full custody of Brandy, preceded his fellow members of the bar in violent death by a remarkably short time. The headlines promise to be huge if only Willie (Grace, 2016, etc.) can keep his job at his dying newspaper, which is hemorrhaging staff members every day in anticipation of yet another sale to yet another soulless journalism chain, even though Willie insists, “We’re like the ugly baby everybody passes over at the orphanage.”

Despite an overlong last act, Owen produces another grim, tightly woven, and resolutely professional piece of work with a memorably nightmarish payoff.

Pub Date: June 30, 2017

ISBN: 978-1-57962-499-6

Page Count: 240

Publisher: Permanent Press

Review Posted Online: April 3, 2017

Kirkus Reviews Issue: April 15, 2017

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A CONSPIRACY OF BONES

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

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BADLANDS

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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