An enjoyable, sometimes-challenging work for those who like contemplative, simmering mysteries.
Another series installment that chronicles the adventures of a San Francisco Bay Area dominatrix detective.
In this moody, curious, and intriguing noir mystery, Mason (Partitions of Unity, 2018, etc.) revisits her durable and multitalented protagonist Elizabeth Cromwell. In a bar one afternoon, the tall, blonde sex worker meets 60-ish Israel “Izzy” Zhulzhoff, an odd bird who tells her lengthy stories about his wife—and his pending divorce. He asks Cromwell to pose as his spouse at a high school reunion gala the same night. She agrees, but Zhulzhoff never shows up at the event. Instead, Cromwell meets and bonds with a woman named Sylvia Reynolds, another attendee whose husband is also curiously absent. Reynolds gives Cromwell the keys to her yellow Lamborghini, which Cromwell takes for a joyride across the Golden Gate Bridge; afterward, an unknown assailant attacks Cromwell, causing her to flee for her life. Deducing that she was set up by Reynolds, she trades notes with police, who provide her with an old file of unsolved murders of blonde women in the area. She also visits Mistress Annabel Flair, another local dominatrix, who’s happy to banter back and forth with her about sex dungeons and the business of “fantasy enactments,” although Annabel also reveals that she has plans to leave the Bay Area permanently. Cromwell develops a nagging suspicion that Reynolds may have been set up herself, and further snooping leads to an old but relevant case. Cromwell’s scrutiny of Zhulzhoff’s disappearance and likely death only leads her to more complicated connections. If the story seems rather convoluted rather than simply mysterious, that’s because it is. However, Mason’s prose still manages to provide it with a beating heart. Her style is artfully decorative for a detective novel, but it’s still resolutely functional, and it’s never in any way rushed or brisk. She makes use of cryptic dialogue and clever repartee to tell the story; many characters speak in near riddles with one another, and one can envision them volleying their one-of-a-kind bons mots back and forth with knowing grins. Readers of Mason’s other books will recognize her distinctive method of narration; indeed, some may well seek out this latest book because of it. It’s certainly a unique and quirky style, but it never diminishes the impact of the mystery plot or the overall characterization of Cromwell, who remains an intimidating figure to behold. She’s still clever, smart, seductive, edgy, beautiful, and every bit as tough as her “six feet two inches in pumps” stature suggests. From Cromwell’s first-person perspective, readers get to know intimately how she thinks, what she fears and desires, and, perhaps most importantly, how she investigates the crimes that always seems to land on her doorstep. Mason’s series of detective novels aren’t easy reads, to be sure, nor do they seem intended to be, as each carefully crafted line defies attempts at simplistic interpretation. Overall, readers will find that there’s much to savor in this moodily atmospheric whodunit.
An enjoyable, sometimes-challenging work for those who like contemplative, simmering mysteries.Pub Date: Dec. 4, 2006
ISBN: 978-1-4257-2475-7
Page Count: 232
Publisher: Xlibris
Review Posted Online: May 21, 2019
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 1, 2019
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
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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