The laudable protagonist once again guides readers through a robust detective story.
Lansing’s latest thriller (The Devil’s Necktie, 2015, etc.), the third outing for Jack Bertolino, finds the private investigator searching for a killer whose assassination of a known criminal results in a child’s accidental death.
Toby Dirk’s decision to take out drug dealer Tomas Vegas sniper-style isn’t what puts Jack on the case. It’s the stray bullet that kills 6-year-old Maria Sanchez. Former NYPD detective Jack is already in Los Angeles, his prior tussle with kidnappers and sex traffickers providing the basis for the currently in-production film Done Deal. He’s technical adviser to the movie’s star, Susan Blake, but also acting as bodyguard; a stalker followed the actress from New York. Toby, meanwhile, comes from a family of lawbreakers, with him and older brothers Terrence and Sean running a store to launder dirty money. They dabble in various illicit deeds, including stealing drugs and cash from other dealers. But Jack’s suspicion that the Vegas hit was personal may be spot-on: Toby doesn’t tell his brothers that he was the shooter. When Toby executes a second solo murder, Jack may find a way to link the deaths to the Dirk brothers. The other investigation’s complicated enough, with Jack fairly certain Susan is lying about not knowing the stalker’s identity. But if he gets any closer to unraveling the Dirks’ criminal enterprise, Jack could be the next victim. The protagonist’s working two separate cases ultimately proves beneficial to the story. Lansing takes them in vastly different directions, one built on mystery (details on the stalker are largely unknown), the other on suspense (readers are fully aware of how dangerous the Dirks are). There’s likewise perspective from the baddies, who occasionally commit murders together, while Jack and Susan’s physical relationship, coupled with his ex-wife, Jeannine, suddenly showing up at his door, is a delightful soapy turn. Stellar supporting characters range from legal-advising friend/lawyer Tommy Aronsohn to computer genius Cruz Feinberg, who uses his hacking skills to great effect. And though the private eye’s rugged looks attract the ladies, his frankness is most appealing: “I’ll take [someone] down because he’s a scumbag,” he says. “But I won’t kill him. Because I’m not.”
The laudable protagonist once again guides readers through a robust detective story.Pub Date: May 31, 2016
ISBN: 978-1-5011-4756-2
Page Count: 352
Publisher: N/A
Review Posted Online: June 14, 2016
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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