Holton must be getting more sleep. His fourth plunges into the murky waters of the Chicago police procedural is his least phantasmagoric, most cinematic book to date. The case begins quietly (though in fact the opening scene is the only quiet moment here) with the discovery of a dead soldier detailed to guard Astrolab Industries' arsenal of high-tech weaponry. Before you can say Rambo, an impressively armored assassin has used Astrolab's latest gear to blow up the Temple of Allah, stronghold of Minister Abdul Ali Malik, a.k.a. fence/pimp Slick Rick Johnson. The assault on Allah's emissary is only the first strike (if you don't count that army guard) in millionaire Steven Zalkin's plan to annihilate everyone who gave him a hard time during his last stretch in the Windy City 15 years ago. Since Zalkin (nÇ Martin Zykus), as Holton reveals in two chunky flashbacks, was a lowly busboy who left Chicago back then wanted for rape and aggravated assault and just having confessed to multiple homicides, that's quite a list of targets. There's Sister Mary Louise Stallings, the saintly rape victim who took holy orders instead of turning Zykus in. There's Commander Larry Cole (Chicago Blues, p. 336, etc.) and Sergeant Blackie Silvestri, the two officers who kept arresting Zykus and were forced to let him go by corrupt and incompetent superiors. There's Frank Delahanty, sozzled Times-Herald columnist who ridiculed Zykus, and who's now using his column to bait Zalkin, not even aware—as nobody else seems to notice either—that Zalkin is really Zykus. (Eerily, Zalkin is arrested once again in his present-day incarnation, and once again released by the dim- witted top brass.) Can Cole and his staunch colleagues take Zalkin as Zykus before Zalkin uses the last of his stolen armaments to reduce the Second District police station to a fine powder? Newcomers to Holton's supercharged procedurals will find this season's relatively sedate installment their best chance of hopping this runaway train.
Pub Date: Feb. 12, 1997
ISBN: 0-312-86281-4
Page Count: 384
Publisher: Forge
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Dec. 15, 1996
Furiously suspenseful, but brain-dead second volume in Child’s gratuitously derivative Jack Reacher action series (Killing Floor, 1997). Reacher, a former Army Military Police Major, has now moved on to Chicago, where he gallantly assists a beautiful mystery woman hobbling on a crutch with her dry cleaning. Seconds later, Reacher and the woman, FBI agent Holly Johnson (also daughter of the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, as well as goddaughter of the President), are kidnaped by armed gunmen. Handcuffed together and tossed in the back of a van, the two are taken to the Montana mountain stronghold of Beau Borken, a fat, ugly, psychopathically vicious neo-Nazi militia leader given to sawing the arms off day laborers and making windy speeches about how he brilliant he is. Of course, the kidnappers don’t know that they have a former military police major in their clutches who, in addition to having a Silver Star for heroism, is one of the best snipers the Army has ever produced, can pull iron rings out of barn doors, and kill bad guys with lit cigarettes. Meanwhile, a team of FBI agents, at least one of whom is a mole leaking information to Borken, identify Reacher from a reconstructed photo taken from the dry cleaner’s surveillance camera. Borken, impressed with Reacher’s military record, lectures him about his brilliant plan to overthrow the US using a hijacked Army missile unit, with Holly held as a hostage in a specially constructed, dynamite-lined prison cell. Borken stupidly lets Reacher best him in a shooting match, then grandiosely turns his back on his captives enough times for Reacher and Holly to escape, cause havoc, get captured, escape, make love in the woods, cause more havoc, and get captured again, as General Johnson, FBI Director Harlan Webster, and General Garber, Reacher’s former commander, plan a covert strike on Borken’s fortress that’s certain to fail. Another Rogue Warrior meets Die Hard with all the typical over-the-top plotting, blood-splattering ultraviolence, lock-jawed heroics and the dumbest villains this side of Ruby Ridge.
Pub Date: July 20, 1998
ISBN: 0-399-14379-3
Page Count: 384
Publisher: Putnam
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 15, 1998
The book ends on a cliffhanger worthy of Harry Potter, and Rowling’s readers will eagerly await the next installment.
J.K. Rowling continues her investigation of the dark side—this time giving us three gruesomely twisted suspects—in her latest pseudonymous mystery.
Robin Ellacott first showed up at hard-living private eye Cormoran Strike’s office as a temp, but by the end of their second big case (The Silkworm, 2014), she’d become indispensable as a fellow investigator. As this third book opens, she’s arriving at work off Charing Cross Road and accepts a package from a deliveryman, thinking it’s a shipment of favors for her upcoming wedding to Matthew, the jealous fiance who disapproves of her job. When she opens it, though, she’s horrified to find a woman’s leg. Someone seems to be using Robin to get to her boss, who's missing a leg himself, having lost it in an explosion in Afghanistan. Strike can think of four men, right off the top of his head, who would be capable of such a horrific thing: the stepfather he thinks killed his mother with a heroin overdose; a famous mobster; and two sick bastards he tangled with when he was an Army investigator. The police immediately go after the mobster, who, on second thought, Strike finds an unlikely culprit—so he and Robin set to work tracking down the other three. Rowling is, as always, an unflinching chronicler of evil, interspersing chapters told from the perspective of the carefully unnamed perpetrator—a serial killer with a penchant for keeping “souvenirs” from his victims’ bodies and an unhealthy obsession with Strike—as he follows Robin around London, waiting for her to get distracted just long enough for him to kill her, too. Robin and Strike’s relationship continues to be the best part of the series, though perhaps it’s too easy to dislike Matthew; readers will be cheering when Robin breaks off their engagement, but of course it won’t be that easy to get rid of him. The story has its longueurs, and if Galbraith weren’t actually Rowling, an editor might have told him to trim a bit, especially once Strike and Robin close in on their three suspects and start conducting repetitive stakeouts (and especially since the two who aren’t Strike’s former stepfather are hard to keep straight).
The book ends on a cliffhanger worthy of Harry Potter, and Rowling’s readers will eagerly await the next installment.Pub Date: Oct. 20, 2015
ISBN: 978-0-316-34993-2
Page Count: 512
Publisher: Mulholland Books/Little, Brown
Review Posted Online: Oct. 17, 2015
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Nov. 1, 2015
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