Higgins’ 37th (Bad Company, 2003, etc.): You get what you get.
Can Sean Dillon & Co. blunt the Hammer of God and again save Western Civilization?
When Caspar Rashid, a native of England with big-time Bedouin connections, is picked up in the passport line at Heathrow, no eyebrows or red flags are raised. Routine security measure, that’s all, but as it happens Caspar’s arrest is the opening move in a complex game of geopolitical chess. It’s Dillon himself who puts the arm on Caspar. To his surprise, Dillon—whose place in the Clandestine Hall of Fame has long been reserved—discovers that Caspar is, in fact, eager to be arrested. He wants help, the down and dirty kind, the kind unhampered by niceties such as rules. If Casper can obtain what he needs, he’s willing to swap certain sensitive information concerning al-Qaeda. Dillon & Co. rush to reassure him: “The only rules we have are not to have any.” Turns out that Caspar’s 13-year-old daughter has been kidnapped and spirited away to deepest Iraq—kidnapped by Caspar’s cousin Hussein Rashid, the dreaded Hammer of God, a ferocious Muslim killer who sits at the right hand of Osama bin Laden, at the behest of Caspar’s father, the rich and fanatical Abdul Rashid. Caspar wants her returned. And so an operation is mounted, Colts and Walthers bang away at targets endlessly available, body bags fill—can any other thrillmeister equal the Higgins corpse-per-page count?—and finally there’s the obligatory O.K. Corral variation, during which, for the sake of us all, Dillon & Co. must nail the Hammer.
Higgins’ 37th (Bad Company, 2003, etc.): You get what you get.Pub Date: Jan. 29, 2008
ISBN: 978-0-399-15380-8
Page Count: 320
Publisher: Putnam
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Nov. 1, 2007
All the action and suspense of Box’s long string of high-country adventures, with a solution that’s considerably tighter and...
Wyoming game warden Joe Pickett’s 15th case takes him through some of the darkest days of his checkered career.
While Joe’s surveying a field in which someone massacred a flock of endangered sage grouse, he gets a call that a young woman’s been found in a ditch, badly beaten. Maybe it’s not Joe’s adopted daughter, April, who ran off with rodeo rider Dallas Cates shortly after her 18th birthday (Stone Cold, 2014). But Joe and his librarian wife, Marybeth, know it is, and of course they’re right. Eldon and Brenda Cates insist that Dallas got much too badly banged up at a Houston rodeo to have lifted a hand against April, with whom he’d already split up. Although April, lying in a medically induced coma, is in no position to dispute their story, Joe’s ready to kill Dallas himself—until an anonymous tip identifies survivalist Tilden Cudmore as April’s abductor. Certainly everything about Cudmore’s behavior, especially when he’s confronted by the law, indicates that he fits the bill. While Joe is still wondering which of the suspects is really guilty, his old pal Nate Romanowski, the outlaw falconer last seen giving evidence against murder-for-hire kingpin Wolfgang Templeton, is released from prison, made to sign away most of his civil rights into the bargain, and lured into a lethal ambush and left for dead. Who’s responsible for his shooting? What have they done with his lover and business partner, Liv Brannan? And what hope does Joe have of solving such a range of felonies, especially those that hit closest to home?
All the action and suspense of Box’s long string of high-country adventures, with a solution that’s considerably tighter and more satisfying than most of them. One of Joe’s best.Pub Date: March 10, 2015
ISBN: 978-0-399-16077-6
Page Count: 384
Publisher: Putnam
Review Posted Online: Jan. 7, 2015
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 15, 2015
Melodramatic yet wildly entertaining, with a smashing twist.
A woman meets her dream guy, but his mother is something out of a nightmare in Jones’ debut thriller.
Emily Havistock is immediately attracted to the handsome Adam Banks when they meet each other’s eyes across the room at a networking event for her London consulting firm, and even though she wasn’t looking for a boyfriend, it doesn’t take long before they’re seeing each other every night. Emily’s last relationship ended in disaster, but she feels a true connection to Adam, although he’s not forthcoming about his past. A couple of months into the relationship, he invites her to meet his mother, Pammie, and assures Emily that Pammie will love her. On the way, when Emily makes a light joke about his mom’s taste in music, Adam snaps at her. One would think that Emily might have considered cutting her losses then and there. But, no, Emily is enamored with Adam, so she vows to make it work. What follows is a hellish sequence of passive aggressive nastiness on the part of Pammie that would bring any woman to her knees, begging for mercy. Emily doesn’t feel like she can confide in Adam since he treats his mother like a saint, but she does have the support of her flatmate, Pippa, and best friend Seb. It doesn’t help that Emily feels undeniable sparks with Adam’s younger, very attractive brother, James. Things with Pammie eventually come to a head in a spectacular way, and Emily begins to realize that Adam may not be as perfect as she thought. Emily, who narrates, is relatable even if readers will root for her to put the fiendish, and fiendishly clever, Pammie in her place and smack Adam for not sticking up for her. Jones ratchets up the tension to the breaking point and throws in a curveball that will make readers’ heads spin.
Melodramatic yet wildly entertaining, with a smashing twist.Pub Date: Aug. 21, 2018
ISBN: 978-1-250-19198-4
Page Count: 304
Publisher: Minotaur
Review Posted Online: May 27, 2018
Kirkus Reviews Issue: June 15, 2018
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