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
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
© Copyright 2024 Kirkus Media LLC. All Rights Reserved.
Follow
Popular in this Genre
We can’t wait for you to join Kirkus!
It’s free and takes less than 10 seconds!
Already have an account? Log in.
OR
Sign in with GoogleTrouble signing in? Retrieve credentials.
Welcome Back!
OR
Sign in with GoogleTrouble signing in? Retrieve credentials.
bookshelf
