The mystery at the heart feels lifted from an early Christie or Sayers, but the period detail is rich and pleasantly...
The bloody death of a peer draws in a rambunctious but thoroughly intelligent young cabinetmaker.
Gleeson’s 1999 nonfiction, The Arcanum, was a detailed look at 18th-century Europe’s development of the porcelain industry. Clearly comfortable in and deeply knowledgeable about that era, Gleeson applies a rich veneer of similar detail to a pre-police procedural. In this case the proto-cop is Nathaniel Hopson, a lusty lad nearing the end of his apprenticeship to socially and professionally ambitious master cabinetmaker Thomas Chippendale. Sent by Chippendale to complete the installation of a lavishly carved library in Horseheath Hall, seat of the irritable Lord Montfort near Cambridge, Hopson is pressed into service as an emergency footman at a dinner Montfort throws to show off the gorgeous new bookshelves. In the middle of dinner a shot rings out. Stumbling into the darkened library, tripping over clues and red herrings, Hopson discovers the bloody corpse of Lord Montfort. Montfort, whose gambling debts to dinner guest Lord Foley may impoverish his widow and son, appears to have taken his own life. But the fatal pistol is in the wrong place, there are leeches mysteriously attached to his neck, a beautifully carved little box in his hand, bloody square-toed footprints leading to a window, and buckets of blood on the window sill. Hopson is blessed with innate skills of mechanical deconstruction, and he begins at once to deconstruct the death scene, leading Lord Foley to enlist his help in sorting out the various queernesses that are complicated by the discovery of the body of Hopson’s fellow apprentice and recently missing best friend John Partridge frozen in a nearby pond. Hopson’s detection will involve the lovely manager of a luxury-wood works, throw him into the messy lives of his betters, and irritate the already grumpy but not yet legendary Mr. Chippendale.
The mystery at the heart feels lifted from an early Christie or Sayers, but the period detail is rich and pleasantly distracting.Pub Date: Jan. 1, 2004
ISBN: 0-7432-4686-1
Page Count: 352
Publisher: Simon & Schuster
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Oct. 1, 2003
Hollywood homicide dick Harry Bosch goes up against whoever killed high-rolling, lowlife filmmaker Tony Aliso and tipped his body into the trunk of his Rolls. The early buzz on the case shouts Las Vegas—so Harry heads out there in hopes of tracking down Tony's latest companion, a stripper named Layla. Instead he finds a trail of evidence that links Tony to a money-laundering operation for Joey Marks, the outfit's top man in Vegas; to Dolly's, a strip club owned by Marks lieutenant Luke ("Lucky") Goshen; and to Eleanor Wish, an ex-FBI agent whose activities took her to Harry's bed and a stretch in the pen before she turned up on video playing poker at Tony's side. Tough-guy Harry (The Last Coyote, 1995, etc.), incredibly still carrying a torch for Eleanor, wastes no time rekindling their affair—Eleanor's sullenness cracks just long enough for some brisk sex—and then finds he has to cut all sorts of deals with the Vegas cops and his own department to keep her out of the case he's building against Lucky Goshen. Back in L.A., deeper trouble awaits: When Harry lays out the case against Goshen—motive, fingerprints, murder weapon—he's told that Goshen's an undercover FBI agent with an ironclad alibi and that he's dashed into the middle of a sting that's been years in the making. Relieved once again of his homicide assignment, Harry—together with trusty sidekicks Jerry Edgar and Kiz Rider—goes up against Tony's killers himself, with results as gripping and satisfying as they are improbable. Forget realism, okay? If you'd like to see a buried love affair take off like a rocket and a bunch of crooks and crooked cops as canny and treacherous as le Carres spies, you've come to the right place.
Pub Date: Jan. 1, 1997
ISBN: 0-316-15244-7
Page Count: 400
Publisher: Little, Brown
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Oct. 1, 1996
All the emotional intensity Slaughter’s readers expect, now focused on a diabolical domestic terrorist. Don’t say you...
Pediatrician/medical examiner Sara Linton’s path to marrying Will Trent, of the Georgia Bureau of Investigation, runs into apocalyptic obstacles only Slaughter could devise.
To begin with, Sara’s mother objects so strenuously to Will that she won’t even utter his name. But her opposition can’t compete with the carnage that erupts when Sara and Will (The Kept Woman, 2016, etc.), hearing the sounds of a bomb near Emory University, rush to the scene and encounter along the way the aftermath of a three-car collision. Stopping to help, they soon smell something amiss, but not soon enough to prevent them from being overpowered and separated by the supposed victims. Will is beaten to the ground; Sara is whisked off in a car whose occupants include Michelle Spivey, a scientist with the Centers for Disease Control who was abducted from under her young daughter’s nose a month ago. Arriving at the mountain encampment of the Invisible Patriot Army, a paramilitary cadre determined to make America white again, Sara is first forced to treat the wounds of the men who kidnapped her and then asked by IPA leader Dash to remain so that she can treat an outbreak of measles that’s swept through the children in the camp, including Dash’s daughter, whose mother is Gwen Novak, the daughter of Martin Novak, whose history of anti-government bank robberies has made him a high-value federal prisoner. As Will schemes to infiltrate the camp disguised as a new recruit, Sara is dismayed to find that no matter what she does, the children she’s tending keep getting sicker and sicker. Even the most ardent fans of Slaughter’s white-hot thrillers (Pieces of Her, 2018, etc.) will be shocked and horror-stricken by the outrage Dash has planned.
All the emotional intensity Slaughter’s readers expect, now focused on a diabolical domestic terrorist. Don’t say you weren’t warned.Pub Date: Aug. 20, 2019
ISBN: 978-0-06-285808-5
Page Count: 464
Publisher: Morrow/HarperCollins
Review Posted Online: June 16, 2019
Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 1, 2019
BOOK TO SCREEN
BOOK TO SCREEN
BOOK TO SCREEN
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