by John Lawton ‧ RELEASE DATE: Jan. 1, 2004
Brisk but uncompelling. The chapters from American Cal’s perspective seem veddy British.
In 1941 London, a Scotland Yard detective and an American Army captain team up to ferret out a spy.
With RAF bombs exploding all around him, SS officer Wolfgang Stahl cleverly escapes Berlin by switching identities with a corpse, then makes his way to London, where he goes into deep hiding. Sent in pursuit is US army captain Calvin Cormack; it turns out that Stahl is actually an American spy who works with Cal. Cal teams up with MI5 officer Walter Stilton and, eventually, with Sergeant Frederick Troy of Scotland Yard, Lawton’s protagonist in his two previous installments. The author leapfrogs over the brooding Old Flames (2003), set during the Cold War, and picks up here where his lively debut, 1995’s Black Out, left off. MI5 prides itself on its meticulous tracking of all foreign agents in England, so Stahl’s capture becomes a matter of ego as well as security. Because Cal and Troy have a lot in common—both are wunderkinds in their respective jobs, both live in the shadow of a famous father (Cal’s is a highly decorated general turned politician, Troy’s a renowned intellectual and diplomat born in Russia)—they should partner well. Instead, they distrust each other immediately and needle each other incessantly. Also, and not incidentally, Cal has a hot affair with Troy’s ex, Kitty, a sexually ravenous redheaded Wren, who also happens to be Stilton’s daughter. Lawton plays out the culture clash of this odd couple to maximum effect, using his unsubtle backdrop of historic color (Churchill and H.G. Wells make cameos). This clash, and the massive three-way chess game among Troy, Cal, and Stilton, each deciding how much of their own intelligence to share and when, comprise the meat of the story.
Brisk but uncompelling. The chapters from American Cal’s perspective seem veddy British.Pub Date: Jan. 1, 2004
ISBN: 0-87113-907-3
Page Count: 336
Publisher: Atlantic Monthly
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Nov. 1, 2003
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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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