If the word "dour" hadn’t already been in the English vocabulary, it would have had to be invented for Rankin (Even Dogs in...
A rogue cop who won’t stay retired has even less incentive to follow the rules when an old murder leads to a new crime.
It’s no wonder that John Rebus can’t let go of a case, since he’s only partly enjoying his forced retirement. Having dinner at Edinburgh's old Caledonian Hotel, he recalls the 1978 murder of Maria Turquand that took place there; thinking about the cold case distracts him from ominous signs that his past disregard for his own health is catching up with him. So he asks his old friend and former colleague DI Siobhan Clarke if she can smuggle him the case files even though she’s in the thick of investigating the assault of a rising star in local organized crime. Malcolm Fox, recently promoted to the glory of the centralized Scottish Crime Campus, is called back to Edinburgh to be eyes and ears on the assault case, causing additional tension with Siobhan, who, they both know, was equally qualified for the promotion. Then Robert Chatham, the ex-detective who’d handled the Turquand case, is fished out of the harbor—and it wasn’t suicide. Rebus, who’d talked to Chatham shortly before he died, insinuates himself into the investigation of the latest murder and its possible connection to a money-laundering operation, an attempt to blackmail Fox, a large sum of missing cash, an equally missing tycoon, and the overshadowing presence of a veteran crime lord. The intertwining plots and relationships will be easier going for readers well-versed in the Rebus rubric, but newcomers will still be able to follow and appreciate the series’ finely crafted new entry.
If the word "dour" hadn’t already been in the English vocabulary, it would have had to be invented for Rankin (Even Dogs in the Wild, 2015, etc.) and his enduring detective. Luckily, the author is as tireless in delivering the goods as his creation is in solving tough cases.Pub Date: Jan. 31, 2017
ISBN: 978-0-316-34257-5
Page Count: 400
Publisher: Little, Brown
Review Posted Online: Nov. 21, 2016
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Dec. 1, 2016
A satisfying puzzler, one to shelve alongside le Carré, Forsyth, and other masters of foreign intrigue.
“It is a dangerous time to be alive.” Indeed, as this fast-paced thriller by seasoned mysterian Pavone (The Travelers, 2016, etc.) proves.
A siren wails in Paris, a once-rare sound often heard in these times of terror. It’s gone off because a jihadi has strapped a bomb to himself and is standing in front of the Louvre, “in the epicenter of Western civilization,” waiting for his moment. But is he a jihadi? Who’s put him up to this dastardly deed, and why? That’s for Kate Moore, deep-cover CIA agent, “sidewalk-swimming in a sea of expat moms,” to suss out. Kate lives in a shadow world, so hidden away that even her hedge-fund-master husband doesn’t have a clue about what she does: “Dexter has been forced to accept that she’s entitled to her secrets,” Pavone writes, adding, “He’s had plenty of his own.” Indeed, and in the shadowy parallel world of speculative finance, he’s teamed up with a fast-living entrepreneur who wants nothing more than to become superrich and run off with his “assistant-concubine.” Hunter Forsyth is about to announce a huge deal, but suddenly he’s disappeared, whisked away by shadowy people who, by the thin strings of suspense, have something to do with that bomb across town. So does a vengeful young mom, strapped to a useless husband and bent on payback for a long-ago slight. All this is red meat to Kate, who’s tired of the domestic life, no matter how much a sham, and is happier than a clam when “running her network of journalists, bloggers, influencers, as well as drug dealers, thieves, prostitutes, and cops, plus diplomats and soldiers, maitre d’s and concierges and bartenders and shopkeepers.” With all those players, mercenaries, and assorted bad guys thrown into the mix, you just know that the storyline is going to be knotty, and it resolves in a messy spatter of violence that’s trademark Pavone and decidedly not for the squeamish.
A satisfying puzzler, one to shelve alongside le Carré, Forsyth, and other masters of foreign intrigue.Pub Date: May 7, 2019
ISBN: 978-1-5247-6150-9
Page Count: 384
Publisher: Crown
Review Posted Online: Feb. 17, 2019
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 1, 2019
Virginia Chief Medical Examiner Dr. Kay Scarpetta (Cruel and Unusual, 1993, etc.) has given up smoking and strayed far enough from her high-pressure office to act as a consulting profiler for the FBI, but her nerves are just as frayed at Quantico, especially since her rebellious niece Lucy is a computer-whiz trainee for the Engineering Research Facility down the hall. Scarpetta's latest case is ugly even by her standards: the North Carolina sex murder of Emily Steiner, 11, whose forensics are so contradictory that Scarpetta wants to exhume her for a second autopsy. Before she can do so, North Carolina Bureau investigator Max Ferguson, returning home from Quantico, dies, apparently of autoerotic asphyxia, and his local contact winds up in the hospital with a heart attack. Scarpetta scurries to work out how and why Temple Gault, an apparent serial killer who's the leading suspect in Emily's murder, might have killed Ferguson—and what to make of her gruesome discovery in Ferguson's freezer. No sooner has she finished the grisly re-examination of Emily, than word comes from Quantico that Lucy's sneaked into an unauthorized area after hours and is getting washed out of the program. Scarpetta's two nightmares come together with a crash—a car crash that sends Lucy to the hospital and Scarpetta out to the field to run forensics on her own automobile. As always, tension is ratcheted up, rather unconvincingly, by plots whose interconnection is never quite clear and by the constant friction between Scarpetta and her niece; her sister; her FBI lover, Benton Wesley; her boorish buddy, Capt. Pete Marino; and Emily's mother, with whom Marino is having an affair. But beneath the welter of quarrels and coincidences is as insidious a study of evil as Cornwell has turned in. (Literary Guild main selection)
Pub Date: Oct. 1, 1994
ISBN: 0-684-19597-6
Page Count: 320
Publisher: Scribner
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 1, 1994
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