A shrewd, likable protagonist gives this straightforward crime novel a boost.
In Guigli’s mystery sequel, a Sacramento-based private investigator digs into an increasingly complicated kidnapping case.
It’s 2007, and cop-turned-PI Bart Lasiter is initially “dumbstruck” by the attractive, blue-eyed, blond-haired woman who walks into his office, which doubles as his home. Mrs. Drake Concannon, as she calls herself, is distraught over her husband, Drake, a retired engineer and former consultant in the gambling industry who vanished while out on the lake in his small boat; she produces a ransom note she says she received, in which the anonymous perpetrators demand $5 million, due in two days’ time. Bart willingly accepts the case, assuring her that he’ll deliver the ransom personally and ensure her husband makes it home safely. In the meantime, he looks into identifying the kidnapper, or kidnappers; the ransom note ends with an apparent pirate insignia. Soon enough, Bart has a run-in with a trio of piratelike bikers—one of whom even has a stereotypical peg leg. Further investigation takes the PI to a yacht club and later reveals a possible Mafia connection. Unfortunately, the ransom drop-off doesn’t go quite as expected and Bart soon finds himself in peril. Guigli’s lowly protagonist, who first appeared in the novelette Bad News for a Ghost (2013), has some intriguing quirks, including the retro Casio wristwatch he wears and the fact that, prior to the investigation, he has to buy his pistol back from a pawnshop. He’s also armed with terrific allies, including his landlord and former police training officer, Fred Clifford, and resourceful friend/newspaper reporter, Al Wexler. The mystery itself is relatively lightweight, with few surprises; Bart is a methodical private eye who works with a to-do list, stealthily follows people, and smoothly questions others by roping them in with easygoing conversations. The final act also decelerates the action considerably; the elucidation of details takes a bit too long, and several chapters near the end deliver offer good lines that could have appealingly closed the novel, but don’t.
A shrewd, likable protagonist gives this straightforward crime novel a boost.Pub Date: Dec. 12, 2024
ISBN: 9798989333721
Page Count: 420
Publisher: N/A
Review Posted Online: March 23, 2025
Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 1, 2025
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
As the prosecutor sadly observes: “All this because of a dead buffalo.”
Idyllic Catalina Island turns out to be just as crime infested as the rest of Los Angeles County in the latest series launch by the creator of Harry Bosch, Renée Ballard, and the Lincoln Lawyer.
Det. Sgt. Stilwell has been bounced off the county homicide squad and rusticized to Catalina, where the exclusive Black Marlin Club won’t admit even four-term Avalon Mayor Doug Allen to full membership and the most serious infraction seems to be the killing and cutting up of a buffalo, presumably by Henry Gaston, who operates Island Mystery Tours when he’s not threatening endangered species. All that changes with the discovery of a body sunk in the surrounding waters. The corpse, most recognizable by its streak of purple hair, is that of Leigh-Anne Moss, a Black Marlin server recently fired for fraternizing with members and guests she sees as potential sugar daddies. Stilwell is sufficiently invested in her murder to compete vigorously over jurisdiction with Rex Ahearn, the LA County homicide detective who kept his job when Stilwell lost his. Their rivalry, fueled by mutual contempt, is only the first hint that Stilwell will end up fighting his counterparts in law enforcement and local government at least as hard as he fights crooks like hit man Merris Spivak and Oscar “Baby Head” Terranova, Henry’s boss, who comes under sharper scrutiny when Henry disappears and ends up dead himself. Connelly handles his hero’s obligatory romance with assistant harbormaster Tash Dano and his increasingly wary alliance with assistant D.A. Monika Juarez with equal professionalism, and if the wrap-up leaves some loose ends dangling, well, that’s what franchises are for.
As the prosecutor sadly observes: “All this because of a dead buffalo.”Pub Date: May 20, 2025
ISBN: 9780316588485
Page Count: 352
Publisher: Little, Brown
Review Posted Online: April 19, 2025
Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 15, 2025
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
© Copyright 2025 Kirkus Media LLC. All Rights Reserved.
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