Since Adjutant Henk Grijpstra and Sgt. Rinus de Gier have appeared in 14 novels (The Perfidious Parrot, 1998, etc.) and only 13 stories—all of them collected here, 5 readily available in English for the first time—readers may wonder whether the short form really suits van de Wetering’s digressive gifts. The answer is yes, absolutely, fabulously—but only if you’re willing to define the detective short story rather more generously than usual. Van de Wetering, playing with the form like a cat with a mouse, sets his detective duo to investigate murders, suicides, a supermarket scam, sometimes shunting them into minor roles or keeps them offstage till the climax (their boss the commisaris even gets a case of his own). His expositions are equally varied—has any writer of mystery short fiction ever been so inventive in the ways he lays out the facts of a case?—and his casts thin but memorable, since he paints his characters so lovingly that he rarely has time to set up more than a suspect or two, each of them well worth your time. The changes van de Wetering rings on the short-story formula do more than any other recent writer’s work to inspire confidence in the form.
Pub Date: Sept. 1, 1999
ISBN: 1-56947-171-1
Page Count: 266
Publisher: Soho
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 15, 1999
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
The same mixture as before: a sweeping, overplotted, overscaled account of high crimes, misdemeanors, and violent coverups...
An Army mortician teams up, sort of, with a military artist who just won’t die to thwart an obscenely shape-shifting conspiracy.
Everybody has some God-given talent. Jim Zigarowski’s is to make the dead look presentable for the families who come to view their remains at the Dover Air Force Base. When the bombing of a military plane from Alaska kills all seven aboard, Zig’s attention is drawn not to the headline victim—Librarian of Congress Nelson Rookstool, an old friend of President Orson Wallace—but to Sgt. Nola Brown, an Army artist-in-residence who years ago saved the life of 12-year-old Maggie Zigarowski, though she couldn’t prevent Zig’s daughter from dying scarcely a year later. Illegally grabbing the job of preparing Nola’s remains from the mortician assigned to the case, Zig quickly discovers that the remains aren’t Nola’s after all. His joy that Nola is still alive is tempered by the sobering realization that an awful lot of people have conspired to cover up this happy news by signing off on her death. Inevitably, the living Nola returns, determined to get to the bottom of the bombing. By that time, veteran suspenser Meltzer (co-author: The House of Secrets, 2016, etc.) has begun a series of harrowing flashbacks to Nola’s childhood and adolescence that firmly establish her as the most damaged heroine in the genre since Lisbeth Salander. Uncovering traces of a sinister scheme called Operation Bluebook, Zig and Nola work—often at cross-purposes, though not when they need to save each other’s lives—through a web of corrupt procurers, creatively armed killers, and board-certified magicians to trace and neutralize Bluebook before its resourceful conspirators can kill Zig and finish the job they bungled on Nola.
The same mixture as before: a sweeping, overplotted, overscaled account of high crimes, misdemeanors, and violent coverups and reprisals. But those flashbacks into the heroine’s traumatic early years, although they seriously disrupt the momentum of the blood-and-thunder present-day plot, sting long after the details of that plot have faded.Pub Date: March 6, 2018
ISBN: 978-1-4555-5952-7
Page Count: 432
Publisher: Grand Central Publishing
Review Posted Online: Dec. 6, 2017
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 1, 2018
In Kavanagh's capable hands, the familiar plot of serial-killer-strikes-again is given a fresh and complex feel, complete...
Twenty years ago in rural England, teenager Isla Bell found three murdered bodies near Hadrian’s Wall. Now a professor of criminal psychology, she has a chance to study the imprisoned killer—but then the killings start again.
There was plenty of evidence to find Heath McGowan guilty of the original murders, and it was Isla’s police officer father, Eric Bell, who found it. Nailing the killer fast-tracked his career, and now, as Superintendent Bell, he’s in charge when another victim is found. Could there be a copycat killer, or did McGowan have an accomplice that was never found? As Isla studies brain patterns of killers looking for links, DC Mina Arian is assigned to the case. As she stubbornly investigates both past and present cases, Arian begins to see gaps, questions unanswered; but does she dare question the famous Superintendent Bell? Further complicating matters is Isla’s husband, Ramsey, who was one of the original victims and the only survivor. He is very sure Isla shouldn’t be stirring up things or talking with McGowan. The author (The Missing Hours, 2016, etc.) uses her own background as a former police psychologist to strong advantage, especially with Isla’s profiling. Occasionally, her penchant for wordy descriptions (“they couldn’t see the iron fist within the silk glove”) slows the pace, but the red herring–filled conclusion should surprise even the most careful reader.
In Kavanagh's capable hands, the familiar plot of serial-killer-strikes-again is given a fresh and complex feel, complete with several truly sneaky twists.Pub Date: March 26, 2019
ISBN: 978-1-4967-1374-2
Page Count: 320
Publisher: Kensington
Review Posted Online: Dec. 22, 2018
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 15, 2019
BOOK REVIEW
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