The mystery takes a back seat to the hero’s scorched-earth battles with authority figures more powerful than he is.
Who could possibly be more compromised and more jaundiced than rarely employed Chicago shamus Dek Elstrom (Tagged for Murder, 2018, etc.)? Only Milo Rigg, the disgraced investigative reporter who anchors Fredrickson’s new series.
Fifteen months ago, Rigg pushed a little too hard against Cook County Deputy Jerome Glet for moving the bodies at an earlier crime scene in order to arrange a better photo op for himself. That crime—the murders of young Bobby Stemec and John and Anthony Henderson—still hasn’t been solved, and the recently widowed Rigg’s attempts to console former exotic dancer Carlotta Henderson, mother of two of the victims, have been widely assumed to extend to an affair that got him banished from the Chicago Examiner to its suburban magazine, the Pink. So neither Rigg nor Glet is pleased when they run into each other at an unpleasantly similar crime scene at Devil’s Creek, where teenage sisters Beatrice and Priscilla Graves have been found naked and dead from unknown causes. Glet’s boss, Cook County Sheriff Joe Lehman, fastens on Richie Fernandez, a machine operator and dishwasher who knew the Graves girls, as his top suspect but insists that he hasn’t arrested Fernandez, who’s gone missing. At length Rigg digs up a pair of witnesses to the arrest, but shortly after the Pink runs the story, a search for the witnesses comes up empty, putting Rigg in hot water that feels awfully familiar. As he deals with his memories of his murdered wife, the avatars of the local law, and Luther Donovan, the wealthy developer intent on squeezing every dollar out of the Examiner before he tosses it away, Rigg finds only two possible sources of consolation: his unlikely liaison with Aria Gamble, the glamorous features reporter who’s been exiled to the Pink along with him, and the fact that so many suspects and antagonists are dying all around him.
The mystery takes a back seat to the hero’s scorched-earth battles with authority figures more powerful than he is.Pub Date: Feb. 4, 2020
ISBN: 978-0-7278-8916-4
Page Count: 224
Publisher: Severn House
Review Posted Online: Nov. 9, 2019
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Dec. 1, 2019
Mystery and detection compete with a gorgeous swarm of supercharged personalities on their own wild rides.
Unlicensed, untrammeled, uncensored South Central shamus Isaiah Quintabe’s fourth case could be his toughest—and not because it’s so hard to figure out whodunit.
Nobody says no to arms dealer Angus Byrne, and he certainly doesn’t intend for IQ to be the first. So when East Long Beach’s premiere unofficial investigator, who’s been kidnapped and marched into the dealer’s presence after declining an earlier invitation from his goons, indicates in no uncertain terms that no, he’s not interested in clearing Angus’ daughter, custom tailor Christiana Byrne, from suspicion of shooting Tyler Barnes, Angus’ very best employee, Angus promptly turns up the heat, threatening to break the hand of IQ’s girlfriend, violinist Stella McDaniels, if Christiana is so much as arrested for murder. Not enough pressure for you? Well, IQ’s attachment to Stella is about to be seriously tested by the return of his lost love Grace Monarova, who took off for New Mexico with IQ’s dog in the wake of his last adventure (Wrecked, 2018). And Christiana turns out to be not one but five suspects, including homebody Pearl, seductive Marlene, adolescent Jasper, and guardian Bertrand, all fighting for attention and control inside Christiana’s tormented psyche. Figuring out which of the five personalities witnessed which events on the night of the murder and which of them can remember and describe anything about what really happened would be a tall order for any sleuth. But although he isn’t just any sleuth, IQ has to juggle a record number of subplots and distractions, from his buddy Thomas Kahill’s sudden yearning for true love to the maneuvering of Angus’ lieutenants for control of his arms empire to a series of increasingly intemperate skirmishes over a particular prize, a modern rendition of a Gatling gun.
Mystery and detection compete with a gorgeous swarm of supercharged personalities on their own wild rides.Pub Date: Jan. 28, 2020
ISBN: 978-0-316-50953-4
Page Count: 352
Publisher: Mulholland Books/Little, Brown
Review Posted Online: Oct. 26, 2019
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Nov. 15, 2019
A worthwhile thriller and a valuable exposé.
A CIA coverup slowly unravels.
In 1953, Dr. Charles Wilson either jumped or fell from a window of the Hotel Harrington. In 1975, at a Senate hearing, it was publicly revealed that he had been subjected to a CIA experiment involving LSD, but the fact that he had been a CIA employee and the details of his work for the agency went undiscovered. Internal records of the death were missing, and the director, himself unaware of the actual circumstances of Wilson's death, asks Jack Gabriel to investigate and report the real story if he can. Gabriel knew Wilson and that he worked in the germ warfare laboratories, and from that starting point he begins to explore the questions surrounding Wilson's death. As he works, potential witnesses die "accidentally," avenues of inquiry dry up, and a substantial coverup becomes apparent. Then an anonymous source offers a few tips, and Gabriel begins to understand the true extent of the CIA's crime: They murdered one of their own. There remain questions, though, and in the process of trying to assess who and why, Gabriel's own life becomes perilous. Overall, the novel's pace is a little slow and the plot one-dimensional, but the characters of Gabriel and his family and of Wilson's surviving family are vivid and sympathetic. Vidich (The Good Assassin, 2017, etc.) acknowledges that his novel is based on the story of Frank Olson, who "fell or jumped" from a New York City hotel room in November 1953, and fidelity to historical fact may account for the pace and plotting. But this fidelity also reveals a shameful instance of postwar conduct and the arrogance of the powerful.
A worthwhile thriller and a valuable exposé.Pub Date: Feb. 4, 2020
ISBN: 978-1-64313-335-5
Page Count: 224
Publisher: Pegasus Crime
Review Posted Online: Dec. 22, 2019
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 15, 2020
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