Energetic, sprawling and often stylistically irritating police procedural that follows three LAPD members over a ten-year period, beginning in 1950. Initially, Sgt. Ed Exley, a patrician who venerates his hero-cop father, presumably holds high ideals and unassailable standards. Officer Bud White, on the other hand, is brutal, violent, vengeful and Jack "Trashcan" Vincennes, formerly of the Narco Squad now busted to Vice, is willing to leak dirt to a scandal rag, Hush-Hush, for cash on the line. Over the years, their cases, political alliances, and personalities collide, collude, and corrupt as they come to grips with the aftereffects—on their own lives of a mass murder that comes to be known as the "Nite Owl Massacre." Meanwhile, real-life lowlifes cross their paths; love or certainly sex struts by; and the mighty fall at their feet, where, given the opportunity, they grind them into the dirt (although Exley tries to make exceptions on account of his dad). A wealth of subplots about a Disney World precursor; black musicians who get rousted for drug possession; hookers who go straight (sort of); the demise of sleaze mags; prison-yard hits; and purple convertibles eventually leads into a full understanding of the Nite Owl situation, as well as to the death, crippling, and dishonor of Vincennes, White, and Exley. The rat-a-tat style can be headache-inducing, as can the intertwining cases and ever-shifting focus; still, underneath all the verbiage and bombast, there's force and a bravura that demands attention along with editing.
Pub Date: June 4, 1990
ISBN: 0446674249
Page Count: -
Publisher: Mysterious Press
Review Posted Online: March 28, 2012
Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 15, 1990
BOOK TO SCREEN
A solid sense of place, a looming sense of menace: a frequently gripping read.
Veste’s moody procedural tells the story of a pair of Liverpool detectives tracking a killer influenced by local mythology.
Louise Henderson, the investigator at the heart of this novel, is a detective with secrets. She keeps some from her partner, DS Shipley; when the book opens, she’s also grappling with moments of sudden and inexplicable terror that leave her unsure of their origin and unsettled by their impact on her. Soon, the detectives take up the case of a woman who escaped a deadly attack—and who believes it was the work of the title character, a local legend who may be a murderer, a supernatural creature, or something else entirely. Not long after that, a dead body shows up, which suggests a connection to an earlier death, but a host of loose ends hang for the detectives to piece together—and there’s also the matter of a series of flashbacks set years earlier, when a teenager vanished. How these seemingly disparate elements connect—sometimes linearly, sometimes via well-made twists—leads the novel to its conclusion. Veste’s slow-burning approach works well, sustaining the sense of general wrongness that gives the narrative so much atmosphere. There are a few heavy-handed moments here and there. “They thought they knew evil. They had no idea” is perhaps the most flagrant example; as this book is either about a serial killer or an urban legend come to life, that sense of menace is already built in to the narrative well enough. But the conclusion is largely satisfying, playing well off the dynamics Veste established over the course of the story.
A solid sense of place, a looming sense of menace: a frequently gripping read.Pub Date: Feb. 5, 2019
ISBN: 978-1-4926-7129-9
Page Count: 416
Publisher: Sourcebooks Landmark
Review Posted Online: Nov. 12, 2018
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Dec. 1, 2018
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
Not this time, though. The fact-based mutilations are so outré you just know the answer’s going to be a letdown, and it...
Dead fish and game are only the appetizers for Warden Joe Pickett’s biggest problems in his fourth case.
It’s obvious that cavalier local fisherman Jeff O’Bannon is to blame for the fish floating belly-up in Crazy Woman Creek. But who’s killed the elk, excised the flesh from half his face, and dragged off his enormous carcass? Who’s killed 12 head of Don Hawkins’s cattle in exactly the same way? And has this slaughter of innocents been nothing more than preparation for the remarkably similar murders of ranch hand Tuff Montegue and water-engineering exec Stuart Tanner? Robey Hersig, the County Attorney heading the hastily assembled Northern Wyoming Murder and Mutilations Task Force, lists the likeliest causes: “BIRDS . . . CULTS . . . DISTURBED INDIVIDUALS . . . ARABS . . . GOVERNMENT AGENTS . . . GRIZZLY BEAR . . . ALIENS.” But Joe, skeptical of all these explanations, demands the right to investigate on his own. Even though his mortal enemy, Sheriff Bud Barnum, keeps reminding him he’s only a fish-and-game warden, nobody can deny that Joe’s pulled off some spectacular victories in the past (Winterkill, 2003, etc.).
Not this time, though. The fact-based mutilations are so outré you just know the answer’s going to be a letdown, and it is—even though Joe and his family sweat out suspenseful duels with a self-styled paranormal expert and a trusted neighbor.Pub Date: July 1, 2004
ISBN: 0-399-15200-8
Page Count: 384
Publisher: Putnam
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: June 1, 2004
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