by Joe Hefferon ‧ RELEASE DATE: June 29, 2009
Definitely a notch or two above the usual NYC crime procedural, if for sheer novelty’s sake.
Offbeat modern cop opera plays ancient mysticism against gruesome CSI tropes in the most glorious season of all–Christmas–in New York City’s darkest places.
Real life set the stage for Hefferon, a two-plus-decade law enforcement vet, who walks the walk and talks the talk in his intriguing, character-driven debut thriller. It seems newborn infants are turning up dead in Manhattan streets and Brooklyn parks, as are their strung-out prostitute mothers…but not together. Curious details of these homicides–crucifixes clutched in the hands of the young homeless women, the ritual anointing with myrrh of the infants’ heads–suggest unholy deeds. But is it a newly revealed biblical prophecy from eons ago that has everyone from a local Cardinal to the Vatican up in arms. Or is it all something else entirely more monstrous and closer to home? Red herrings and strange digressions abound. Hefferon’s protagonist Carter Jackson, a recently widowed downtown investigative reporter, wins the prize, though, for his Ghost-esque relationship with the dead wife he can’t quite release. Jackson’s cop brother and other quirky folks from the homicide squad uncover more disturbing evidence of this ancient revelation–involving not the currently trendy Mayan catastrophe predicted for 2012, but rather an even more obscure Aztec prophecy of world upheaval set for 2027, which includes a Chosen One just for fun. Hefferon’s penchant for contrasting baroque, Lifetime Network homilies with vintage Serpico tough-guyisms, and his confusing midgraph shifts in tense, make the book a bit of an effort for less patient readers. But as the Jackson men and their crew troll from crime scene to crime scene, making really bad jokes and dealing with various sorts of intrusions from lowlifes and the well-heeled alike, the real story of who is killing these innocent babies–and precisely how and why–is revealed in a brutal, surprising and satisfying twist.
Definitely a notch or two above the usual NYC crime procedural, if for sheer novelty’s sake.Pub Date: June 29, 2009
ISBN: 978-1-4415-4158-1
Page Count: -
Publisher: N/A
Review Posted Online: May 23, 2010
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
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by Kathy Reichs ‧ RELEASE DATE: March 17, 2020
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
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by C.J. Box ‧ RELEASE DATE: July 28, 2015
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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