Tense, brutal, and satisfying for thriller fans.
A gripping tale of murder and revenge written by a Drug Enforcement Administration agent and author of The Far Empty (2016).
In 1999, Texas Ranger Bob Ford was murdered in West Texas. Fifteen years later, his son Danny prepares to find his father’s killer. Today, there’s a whole lot more killing in Big Bend County, where sangre exige sangre—blood demands blood. Sheriff Chris Cherry and his deputies investigate the murder of river guide Billy Bravo, whose body is found in the desert with a crushed skull. They suspect the Aryan Brotherhood of Texas, a “one hundred percent bad” prison gang that aims to establish its own “all-Aryan settlement” in the tiny, well-named ghost town of Killing. The members are covered in tattoos that “tell stories,” and the only way you ever leave ABT is “in a body bag.” Deputies Amé Reynosa and Ben Harper are on Cherry’s dedicated team, and readers had better not get too attached to any of them, as they don’t back away from a good gunfight. The story is grim, but the descriptions and the characters are exceptional. One person’s eyes are “the color of a cold sky threatening snow” while another’s are “flat like a TV tuned to a lost channel.” Amé weaves Spanish phrases into her speech, often but not always translated. “Lo que sea. They might as well be.” John Wesley Earl is the gang leader who thinks nothing of betraying his followers, even his own contemptible sons. “Pastor” Thurman Flowers’ Church of Purity “preaches hate and terror and violence.” Danny Ford, who narrates his chapters in the first-person, was in law enforcement until he disappeared into the ABT on his personal search for justice. Not surprisingly, the blood flows freely until nearly the end.
Tense, brutal, and satisfying for thriller fans.Pub Date: March 20, 2018
ISBN: 978-0-399-17635-7
Page Count: 480
Publisher: Putnam
Review Posted Online: Dec. 23, 2017
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 15, 2018
A murder is committed in a stalled transcontinental train in the Balkans, and every passenger has a watertight alibi. But Hercule Poirot finds a way.
**Note: This classic Agatha Christie mystery was originally published in England as Murder on the Orient Express, but in the United States as Murder in the Calais Coach. Kirkus reviewed the book in 1934 under the original US title, but we changed the title in our database to the now recognizable title Murder on the Orient Express. This is the only name now known for the book. The reason the US publisher, Dodd Mead, did not use the UK title in 1934 was to avoid confusion with the 1932 Graham Greene novel, Orient Express.
Pub Date: Feb. 28, 1934
ISBN: 978-0062073495
Page Count: -
Publisher: Dodd, Mead
Review Posted Online: Sept. 20, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 1, 1934
The parts with Nero Wolfe, the only character Goldsborough brings to life, are almost worth waiting for.
In Archie Goodwin's 15th adventure since the death of his creator, Rex Stout, his gossipy Aunt Edna Wainwright lures him from 34th Street to his carefully unnamed hometown in Ohio to investigate the death of a well-hated bank president.
Tom Blankenship, the local police chief, thinks there’s no case since Logan Mulgrew shot himself. But Archie’s mother, Marjorie Goodwin, and Aunt Edna know lots of people with reason to have killed him. Mulgrew drove rival banker Charles Purcell out of business, forcing Purcell to get work as an auto mechanic, and foreclosed on dairy farmer Harold Mapes’ spread. Lester Newman is convinced that Mulgrew murdered his ailing wife, Lester’s sister, so that he could romance her nurse, Carrie Yeager. And Donna Newman, Lester’s granddaughter, might have had an eye on her great-uncle’s substantial estate. Nor is Archie limited to mulling over his relatives’ gossip, for Trumpet reporter Verna Kay Padgett, whose apartment window was shot out the night her column raised questions about the alleged suicide, is perfectly willing to publish a floridly actionable summary of the leading suspects that delights her editor, shocks Archie, and infuriates everyone else. The one person missing is Archie’s boss, Nero Wolfe (Death of an Art Collector, 2019, etc.), and fans will breathe a sigh of relief when he appears at Marjorie’s door, debriefs Archie, notices a telltale clue, prepares dinner for everyone, sleeps on his discovery, and arranges a meeting of all parties in Marjorie’s living room in which he names the killer.
The parts with Nero Wolfe, the only character Goldsborough brings to life, are almost worth waiting for.Pub Date: May 19, 2020
ISBN: 978-1-5040-5988-6
Page Count: 248
Publisher: Mysterious Press
Review Posted Online: March 1, 2020
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 15, 2020
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