Sidney Blackpool, another divorced, alcoholic Wambaugh homicide detective with the L.A.P.D. whose son Tommy died in a surfing accident a year ago, is plucked from his familiar environs and set down in windy, sand-blasted Mineral Springs, the scratchy underbelly of chi-chi Palm Springs, and promised a very cushy retirement job if he can uncover the likely murderer of multimillionaire Victor Watson's playboy son Jack, who was found burned to a crisp in the desert, with a bullet in his skull. After 17 months of no-leads, the Palm Springs P.D. draws only yawns on the case. But Victor Watson wants to know who his son's killer is. And he is counting on the bond of rage between fathers who have lost sons to push Blackpool to success. As ever in Wambaugh, every plot-turn occurs through a ton of sheer padding, albeit very engaging padding, a kind of relentlessly black-minded absurdism that replaces mere realism and logic. Blackpool's gaily roistering sidekick Otto Stringer thinks his buddy is an anhedonist, someone incurably unfun-loving. Their investigation involves them with the nearby Mineral Springs P.D., an outhouse outfit of nine dumbheads who are Keystone Kop screw-ups of the first water, among them overweight Chief Paco Pedroza, who is a sexist pig with jelly tits and a mustard yellow aloha shirt. These cartoon police clinkers were all hired into the Mineral Springs P.D. by Sergeant Harry Bright, the Chief's confidant and keeper of the secrets arising from their force's sublime ineptitude. But Blackpool and Stringer gradually discover certain irregularities about Harry Bright that cast a dark cloud over the man—who in any event has been in a coma for several months following a stroke and a heart attack. Oddly enough, Harry Bright has also lost a son—and is a drunk. "Well, you know how it is in police work. There's a guy or two at every station. Whiskey face, whiskey voice, whiskey eyes, but they always show up to work on time. Always have a shoeshine and a pressed uniform. Always do a job. That was Sergeant Bright." And therein also lies the essence of the secret of Harry Bright, the grieving alcoholic father who is now the pressed shell of duty and yet—having lost a son—is capable of forgiving and taking in the lost sons of the varied California police departments. Despite his black humor and sometimes out-loud funny moments, Wambaugh winds up with a fairly serious novel, with rich Christian symbolism in Harry Bright. The force of alcohol addiction and the essence of self deception in the disease are brought home strongly.
Pub Date: Oct. 10, 1985
ISBN: 0553762877
Page Count: 352
Publisher: Morrow/HarperCollins
Review Posted Online: April 11, 2012
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 15, 1985
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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