Politically savvy, but overstuffed with plots and bios of Greek deities. And Dinah (Bonereapers, 2012, etc.) could do with a...
A romantic getaway turns sinister.
Anthropologist Dinah Pelerin and her latest inamorata, Norwegian cop Thor Ramberg, are lolling about on the Greek island of Samos when they’re inconveniently saddled with K.D., the rambunctious daughter of Dinah’s deceased uncle. Worse, when they leave the local tavern, they come across the dead body of Fathi, who’d recently had an argument with their housekeeper’s husband. Thor immediately goes into detective mode, and before Dinah can fortify herself with a belt of ouzo, more complications pile up. First, Thor admits he’s doing undercover work for Norway’s National Criminal Investigation Service, looking into a ring of illegal arms traffickers. Second, the house he rented for their romantic idyll has stood empty for 40 years, ever since the actress who lived there murdered her sister’s husband, a national hero, and his mother and was then herself executed by the Greek junta in power. Her son disappeared into the Aegean, and her cuckoo sister Zenia, now in her 80s, is said to kill cats and cast the evil eye at everyone except the director staying with her to film a docudrama about her family. Third, the place is awash in fake antiquities and forged German identity cards, and fourth, fifth and sixth, someone slashes Dinah’s car ties, vandalizes her rental house and makes off with Thor, whose car is found at the bottom of a ravine. Dinah doesn’t know whom to trust. Everyone is bribing everyone else and switching sides at every opportunity. With a great leap of intuition, Dinah finally resolves those 40-year-old murders, faces down a passel of evildoers and reunites, at least temporarily, with Thor.
Politically savvy, but overstuffed with plots and bios of Greek deities. And Dinah (Bonereapers, 2012, etc.) could do with a verve implant.Pub Date: June 4, 2013
ISBN: 978-1-4642-0137-0
Page Count: 250
Publisher: Poisoned Pen
Review Posted Online: May 4, 2013
Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 15, 2013
Forget about solving all these crimes; the signal triumph here is (spoiler) the heroine’s survival.
Another sweltering month in Charlotte, another boatload of mysteries past and present for overworked, overstressed forensic anthropologist Temperance Brennan.
A week after the night she chases but fails to catch a mysterious trespasser outside her town house, some unknown party texts Tempe four images of a corpse that looks as if it’s been chewed by wild hogs, because it has been. Showboat Medical Examiner Margot Heavner makes it clear that, breaking with her department’s earlier practice (The Bone Collection, 2016, etc.), she has no intention of calling in Tempe as a consultant and promptly identifies the faceless body herself as that of a young Asian man. Nettled by several errors in Heavner’s analysis, and even more by her willingness to share the gory details at a press conference, Tempe launches her own investigation, which is not so much off the books as against the books. Heavner isn’t exactly mollified when Tempe, aided by retired police detective Skinny Slidell and a host of experts, puts a name to the dead man. But the hints of other crimes Tempe’s identification uncovers, particularly crimes against children, spur her on to redouble her efforts despite the new M.E.’s splenetic outbursts. Before he died, it seems, Felix Vodyanov was linked to a passenger ferry that sank in 1994, an even earlier U.S. government project to research biological agents that could control human behavior, the hinky spiritual retreat Sparkling Waters, the dark web site DeepUnder, and the disappearances of at least four schoolchildren, two of whom have also turned up dead. And why on earth was Vodyanov carrying Tempe’s own contact information? The mounting evidence of ever more and ever worse skulduggery will pull Tempe deeper and deeper down what even she sees as a rabbit hole before she confronts a ringleader implicated in “Drugs. Fraud. Breaking and entering. Arson. Kidnapping. How does attempted murder sound?”
Forget about solving all these crimes; the signal triumph here is (spoiler) the heroine’s survival.Pub Date: March 17, 2020
ISBN: 978-1-9821-3888-2
Page Count: 352
Publisher: Scribner
Review Posted Online: Dec. 22, 2019
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 15, 2020
A suspenseful, professional-grade north country procedural whose heroine, a deft mix of compassion and attitude, would be...
Box takes another break from his highly successful Joe Pickett series (Stone Cold, 2014, etc.) for a stand-alone about a police detective, a developmentally delayed boy, and a package everyone in North Dakota wants to grab.
Cassandra Dewell can’t leave Montana’s Lewis and Clark County fast enough for her new job as chief investigator for Jon Kirkbride, sheriff of Bakken County. She leaves behind no memories worth keeping: her husband is dead, her boss has made no bones about disliking her, and she’s looking forward to new responsibilities and the higher salary underwritten by North Dakota’s sudden oil boom. But Bakken County has its own issues. For one thing, it’s cold—a whole lot colder than the coldest weather Cassie’s ever imagined. For another, the job she turns out to have been hired for—leading an investigation her new boss doesn’t feel he can entrust to his own force—makes her queasy. The biggest problem, though, is one she doesn’t know about until it slaps her in the face. A fatal car accident that was anything but accidental has jarred loose a stash of methamphetamines and cash that’s become the center of a battle between the Sons of Freedom, Bakken County’s traditional drug sellers, and MS-13, the Salvadorian upstarts who are muscling in on their territory. It’s a setup that leaves scant room for law enforcement officers or for Kyle Westergaard, the 12-year-old paperboy damaged since birth by fetal alcohol syndrome, who’s walked away from the wreck with a prize all too many people would kill for.
A suspenseful, professional-grade north country procedural whose heroine, a deft mix of compassion and attitude, would be welcome to return and tie up the gaping loose end Box leaves. The unrelenting cold makes this the perfect beach read.Pub Date: July 28, 2015
ISBN: 978-0-312-58321-7
Page Count: 272
Publisher: Minotaur
Review Posted Online: April 21, 2015
Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 15, 2015
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