Features blistering gun battles and a veritable heap of plot twists.
In Harvey’s (Dead on the Vine, 2014) thriller, police suspect a former Texas cop of murder, and everyone thinks he’s stashed and stolen $15 million in loot.
Valentine Justice nearly died four years ago in a gunfight against criminal brothers Lamar and Lemuel Sutton. The Suttons weren’t so lucky, and Internal Affairs forced Val into retirement, lest he face murder charges. Val vehemently denied shooting and crippling little sis Abby Sutton in the same shootout, but when she turns up dead in the present day, he becomes the primary suspect in her murder. Abby, however, had told her dad, con man/preacher Garland, that Val knew where her brothers’ pilfered fortune was, and now cops and criminals alike are after the $15 million in cash and gold. Val and his lawyer wife, Victoria, are desperate to keep themselves and their twin sons safe. Harvey loads his novel with action and mystery from start to finish. Dubious goings-on ignite almost immediately: Victoria surmises that the sheriff’s Special Tactics Unit might have offed Abby because she was witness to the STU killing a member of the motorcycle club she headed. And when Dallas police go to arrest Abby’s boyfriend, Axel, he claims “some cop” called him to warn him that the DPD was on its way. Harvey wisely holds off the flashback to Val’s shooting until late in the story; by that point, readers will almost certainly doubt the protagonist and be itching for the narrative to either confirm or debunk the belief that Val’s a murderer, thief, or both. Even Victoria is unsure of her husband’s culpability and, in one of the best moments, ends a voice mail with a blunt “Don’t kill anyone.” Nevertheless, the couple’s bond is undeniably strong, and they’re both formidable individually as well, whether they’re armed or simply using judo-trained hands. The final act is astounding, with most characters focused on the $15 million and prepared to do whatever it takes to get their hands on it, including a dangerous double cross. It’s bloody, to be sure, but also intense and filled with a few surprises that readers aren’t likely to forget.
Features blistering gun battles and a veritable heap of plot twists.Pub Date: Feb. 25, 2015
ISBN: 978-1505382495
Page Count: 260
Publisher: CreateSpace
Review Posted Online: May 26, 2015
Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 1, 2015
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
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
Proficient but eminently predictable. Amid all the time shifts and embedded backstories, the most surprising feature is how...
A convicted killer’s list of five people he wants dead runs the gamut from the wife he’s already had murdered to franchise heroine Ali Reynolds.
Back in the day, women came from all over to consult Santa Clarita fertility specialist Dr. Edward Gilchrist. Many of them left his care happily pregnant, never dreaming that the father of the babies they carried was none other than the physician himself, who donated his own sperm rather than that of the handsome, athletic, disease-free men pictured in his scrapbook. When Alexandra Munsey’s son, Evan, is laid low by the kidney disease he’s inherited from his biological father and she returns to Gilchrist in search of the donor’s medical records, the roof begins to fall in on him. By the time it’s done falling, he’s serving a life sentence in Folsom Prison for commissioning the death of his wife, Dawn, the former nurse and sometime egg donor who’d turned on him. With nothing left to lose, Gilchrist tattoos himself with the initials of five people he blames for his fall: Dawn; Leo Manuel Aurelio, the hit man he’d hired to dispose of her; Kaitlyn Todd, the nurse/receptionist who took Dawn’s place; Alex Munsey, whose search for records upset his apple cart; and Ali Reynolds, the TV reporter who’d helped put Alex in touch with the dozen other women who formed the Progeny Project because their children looked just like hers. No matter that Ali’s been out of both California and the news business for years; Gilchrist and his enablers know that revenge can’t possibly be served too cold. Wonder how far down that list they’ll get before Ali, aided once more by Frigg, the methodical but loose-cannon AI first introduced in Duel to the Death (2018), turns on them?
Proficient but eminently predictable. Amid all the time shifts and embedded backstories, the most surprising feature is how little the boundary-challenged AI, who gets into the case more or less inadvertently, differs from your standard human sidekick with issues.Pub Date: April 2, 2019
ISBN: 978-1-5011-5101-9
Page Count: 352
Publisher: Gallery Books/Simon & Schuster
Review Posted Online: Feb. 18, 2019
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 1, 2019
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