A legal thriller with a pleasant protagonist but an overly slow pace.
Lawyer-turned–painter and gallery owner Charles Sanders Pierce has a brush with danger when his former firm recruits him to investigate client privacy violations in Lively’s series mystery.
Five years ago, Pierce quit to run an art gallery and paint, but his quiet life is put on hold when his former firm, Global Data Systems, requests his help with “a corporate internal investigation of sorts.” Global Data’s integrity—not to mention its financial standing—is at stake after two incidents in which “someone or something” leaked a client’s sensitive health information, and Pierce is a specialist in health benefits law. He’s conflicted about getting mired in “a corporate quagmire of problems,” but he gets a six-figure offer that would keep his gallery afloat for several years. As Pierce considers it, he’s visited by FBI agents demanding cooperation in their own investigation into Global Data. He also gains a mysterious insider ally who sends warning emails (“Things are not always what they seem”) under the pseudonym Emma Peel. Before long, he becomes a shooting and kidnapping target.Health-law compliance wouldn’t seem to lend itself to a riveting mystery, but Walter Neff sold insurance in James M. Cain’s Double Indemnity (1943), and that was a ripping yarn. Pierce is a likable and capable protagonist, and it’s easy to sympathize with someone who escapes the corporate grind to devote himself to an artistic life. However, this story is far from lively—in part because it often gets bogged down in extraneous details, as when Pierce returns to his old firm: “He already had an email. It was from someone identified only as System Administrator welcoming him to his account and reminding him to change his initial password.” In addition, a recurring joke that he initially doesn’t realize his neighbor is a BDSM sex worker strains credulity (“Oh, my collars have arrived.” “Do you have a dog?” “No, I don’t”).
A legal thriller with a pleasant protagonist but an overly slow pace.Pub Date: Oct. 21, 2022
ISBN: 9781959127031
Page Count: 242
Publisher: Treaty Oak Publishers
Review Posted Online: Oct. 11, 2023
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
A routine procedural from Spencer (Dangerous Games, 2007, etc.) made disturbing by dark glimpses into the mind of a child...
The abduction of a young girl from a local park brings DCI Charlie Woodend personal anguish and professional peril.
Angela Jackson’s disappearance puts urgent pressure on the Central Lancashire police force, and they respond with their first team: irascible, efficient DCI Charlie Woodend, DS Monika Paniatowski and young PC Colin Beresford. They even re-attach Woodend’s old sergeant, Bob Rutter, to the group, hoping they’ll find the missing girl before the worst happens. The team works well. Rutter and Paniatowski have eased the tension from their disastrous affair. Monika even helps care for widowed Bob’s daughter Louisa. But their key suspects—pedophile Peter Mainwaring and Edgar Brunton, whose wallet is found near the scene—both have alibis. And Martin Stevenson, the psychiatrist assigned to help profile the abductor, is fresh out of ideas. So the worst does happen: Angela’s abused body turns up, Woodend’s team is kicked to the curb and Charlie has a second corpse on his conscience. It’s a virtual replay of the Taylor case, when his promises to the kidnap victim’s family were mocked by the discovery of her body in the Thames. But as Stevenson predicts, Angela’s abductor won’t stop, and another child disappears. Finding her might offer redemption, but Charlie’s boss, Henry Marlowe, makes it clear: Off the case means off the case.
A routine procedural from Spencer (Dangerous Games, 2007, etc.) made disturbing by dark glimpses into the mind of a child molester.Pub Date: Dec. 1, 2007
ISBN: 978-0-7278-6544-1
Page Count: 224
Publisher: Severn House
Review Posted Online: June 24, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Nov. 1, 2007
A chorus of encouraging voices that mix do-this instruction with companionable inspiration.
Everything you wanted to know about how to plan, draft, write, revise, publish, and market a mystery, courtesy of the cheerleaders from the Mystery Writers of America.
In a marketplace crowded with how-to-write titles, the big selling point of this one is the variety of voices behind more than 30 full-length chapters covering everything from mystery subgenres (Neil Nyren) to publishing law (Daniel Stevens), punctuated with a variety of shorter interpolations. A few of them are more pointed than the longer chapters—e.g., when Rob Hart advises, “Allow yourself the space to forget things,” Tim Maleeny says, “Love your characters, but treat them like dirt,” or C.M. Surrisi notes, “If you’re writing a mystery for kids, remember that your protagonist can’t drive and has a curfew, and no one will believe them or let them be involved.” The contributors vary in their approaches, from businesslike (Dale W. Berry and Gary Phillips on the process of creating graphic novels, Liliana Hart on self-publishing, Maddee James on cultivating an online presence) to personal (Frankie Y. Bailey on creating diverse characters, Chris Grabenstein on writing for middle schoolers, Catriona McPherson on deploying humor) to autobiographical (Rachel Howzell Hall on creating a Black female detective, Louise Penny on building a community of followers) to frankly self-promoting (T. Jefferson Parker on creating villains, Max Allan Collins on continuing someone else’s franchise). Although many familiar bromides are recycled—“All stories are character-driven,” writes Allison Brennan, and Jacqueline Winspear, Gayle Lynds, and Daniel Stashower all urge the paramount importance of research—the most entertaining moments are the inevitable disagreements that crop up, especially between Jeffery Deaver (“Always Outline!”) and editor Child (“Never Outline!”), with Deaver getting the better of the argument. Other contributors include Alex Segura, William Kent Krueger, Tess Gerritsen, and Hallie Ephron.
A chorus of encouraging voices that mix do-this instruction with companionable inspiration.Pub Date: April 27, 2021
ISBN: 978-1-982149-43-7
Page Count: 336
Publisher: Scribner
Review Posted Online: March 2, 2021
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 15, 2021
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