This fast-paced murder mystery is a well-executed blend of police procedural and amateur sleuthing.
The second in a series of mystery novels set in 1990s England.
Greene (The Darkening Sky, 2014) brings back the unlikely crime-solving duo of psychiatrist Carl Power and police superintendent Lynch. When cabinet minister Sir Ian McWilliam is murdered by arson, the young woman who wrote him a series of passionate letters is charged with the crime, but after interviewing her, Power believes she’s innocent. He enlists the help of his friend Lynch, and the two begin digging up evidence even though neither one of them is officially assigned to the case. Power gets to know McWilliam’s daughter and son and learns some shocking details from the accused arsonist. He and Lynch make headway on the case, but things suddenly take a turn for the worse. The case reaches a dead end until a dream Power has leads him to make an important discovery, but following up on the lead will put the psychiatrist in harm’s way. An abrupt, shocking conclusion is ambiguous enough to leave room for a sequel. Though readers of the first book in the series will enjoy the further adventures of Power and Lynch, few characters return in this sequel, which can be read as a stand-alone novel. Power’s former girlfriend is absent; instead, there’s a hint of romance between Power and Sir McWilliam’s daughter, though their potential relationship is complicated by the nature of the case and the timing of events. This time around, there’s less interaction between Power and Lynch, though Power plays a larger role in both the case and the novel, conducting a fair amount of investigative work on his own and offering occasional psychiatric observations. This book—which, somewhat oddly, once again features occasional black-and-white cartoon-style illustrations—tends to be more action oriented than introspective, and as a result, it moves quickly. That said, the cliffhanger ending may frustrate some readers.
This fast-paced murder mystery is a well-executed blend of police procedural and amateur sleuthing.Pub Date: Sept. 25, 2014
ISBN: 978-1502458193
Page Count: 278
Publisher: CreateSpace
Review Posted Online: Jan. 8, 2015
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
BOOK REVIEW
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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