A sharp mystery with a bevy of complicated characters and puzzle pieces.
A private investigator trying to prove the innocence of a woman charged with murder in Mobile, Alabama, finds himself unwittingly caught in a conspiracy leading to further deaths in Sloke’s (Sam and the O’Malley Brothers, 2013) thriller.
PI Jack “Stace” Stacey’s job for attorney/friend Carl Anthony is straightforward: look into the evidence against Carl’s client, Maria Martin. Cops have arrested Maria, a socialite, for the bludgeoning death of her accountant husband, Forrest. Carl thinks the evidence is flimsy, and Stace is inclined to agree; right away, he questions a photo of Forrest in bed with a paramour because the PI himself has never caught adulterers in such a compromising position. Then again, he soon learns Maria’s withholding pertinent info, which could be a sign of her guilt. But while Stace makes it clear his investigation involves only Maria and not tracking down a potential murderer, things get more personal when hit men target him and his family. Suddenly, the FBI joins the case, having linked the hit men to a money-laundering operation in Mobile. Stace, a former FBI agent, is now working with the feds and local PD to stop rampant criminal activity, including more murders. Sloke’s entertaining novel piles on mysteries; one murder suspect becomes a murder victim. Good and bad guys slowly accumulate, but the author shrewdly keeps all characters and corresponding crimes well-organized, so much so that later recaps (i.e., for reporters) are largely unnecessary. Prankster Carl furnishes welcome comic relief, while other dangers boost tension, especially Stace’s braving a hurricane to get home to his wife and son. The latter allows Sloke to display his knack for descriptive passages: the PI takes an “eerily dark” ride in which simple objects like a garbage can lid are “potential lethal projectiles.” Occasional blunders, from grammatical errors to inconsistencies (Maria’s maiden name changing), are minor but still a nuisance.
A sharp mystery with a bevy of complicated characters and puzzle pieces.Pub Date: Oct. 12, 2016
ISBN: 978-1-5371-5001-7
Page Count: 324
Publisher: CreateSpace
Review Posted Online: May 23, 2017
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 1, 2017
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
BOOK REVIEW
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
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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