The dilemmas of two good women struggling in very different ways to do the right thing creates suffocating suspense.
Detective Geena Brassard of the Pennsylvania State Police takes on a case that involves the most heinous springtime ritual imaginable.
Everyone in and around Bangor is unnerved when the body of legal secretary/college student Valerie Brown is pulled from Minsi Lake because she’s the third young woman who has been discovered raped and strangled at the rate of one a year. Geena is even more disturbed than everyone else because she knows that Valerie’s not the third victim but at least the fourth. Seven years ago, Janey Montgomery was attacked in a remarkably similar way but somehow survived to be interviewed by Detective Albert Eugenis, Geena’s partner and mentor. Geena pries Janey’s name out of Albert, since retired, who swears her to secrecy, and shares it with her current partner, Detective Parker Reed, whom she swears to secrecy. It doesn’t matter. Rumor swiftly spreads Janey’s name and secret far and wide. Reporters descend on her like vultures to ask, “How do you feel about being the only surviving victim of the Spring Strangler?” Janey’s psychologist, Dr. Helen Watson, begins to press her in uncomfortable ways. Fellow students and their parents lodge mounting complaints against her son, 6-year-old Christian, who’s always been difficult and may be graduating to violence. Could that be because he’s the child of Janey’s rapist, who’s graduated to serial murder?
The dilemmas of two good women struggling in very different ways to do the right thing creates suffocating suspense.Pub Date: June 16, 2020
ISBN: 978-1-5420-9324-8
Page Count: 320
Publisher: Thomas & Mercer
Review Posted Online: March 28, 2020
Kirkus Reviews Issue: April 15, 2020
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
Social tensions redoubled by race intensify a workmanlike mystery.
African American lawyer Bocephus Haynes accepts a second case guaranteed to set him against pretty much everybody of all races in Giles County, Tennessee.
Minutes after her last tender moments with star high school running back Odell Champagne, Brittany Crutcher, the lead singer for the rising teen band Fizz, leaves a note in his locker telling him she’s leaving the next morning for LA after signing a solo contract that will leave Fizz out in the cold along with Odell. When he sees the note, Odell, having just dominated the intervening football game and heard Fizz crush the halftime show, is enraged, so when a sanitation worker finds Brittany dead in the back of a school bus the next morning, her head smashed in by a beer bottle, it's no surprise that Odell’s prints are all over it or that Chief Deputy Sheriff Frannie Storm arrests Odell for murder. Facing certain conviction, Odell begs Bo Haynes, whom he’s idolized ever since Bo’s own football days at Giles County High, to defend him. Bo takes his sweet time before committing himself, realizing that although both the victim and the defendant are Black, there are difficult racial currents at work. Also, taking the case will antagonize everyone from District Attorney General Helen Lewis to Israel Crutcher, Brittany’s father, who vows violent revenge against anyone who sides with Odell. And there turns out to be good reason for his hesitation, for his own search for an alternative suspect in Michael Zannick, the White manager who landed Brittany’s contract in return for the usual personal accommodations, is torpedoed when Zannick produces an alibi from a wholly unexpected source.
Social tensions redoubled by race intensify a workmanlike mystery.Pub Date: Aug. 3, 2021
ISBN: 978-1-5420-2593-5
Page Count: 368
Publisher: Thomas & Mercer
Review Posted Online: May 18, 2021
Kirkus Reviews Issue: June 1, 2021
Tidy procedural with a canine accent.
When a child goes missing in the wilderness, even more sinister crimes are uncovered.
Deputy Mattie Wray and her K-9 partner, the German shepherd Robo, are summoned from Timber Creek, Colorado, to Washington state for an ultrasensitive search-and-rescue mission. River Allen, the 9-year-old son of actress Chrystal Winter, has wandered away from the movie set where his mother is filming a new movie and into the region east of Olympic National Park. Winter’s revelation that she recently received death threats raises the possibility that this was an abduction and not a simple disappearance. Other questions surround the matter, like why nanny Sally Kessler wasn’t with River at the time. The timing is very bad for Mattie, who’s a week away from her wedding to faithful beau Dr. Cole Walker, but duty calls. Mattie and Robo are part of a large operation involving multiple other pairs. Mizushima’s ninth Timber Creek K-9 mystery rolls slowly, with rich descriptions of the rugged terrain and the procedural details of a large-scale search-and-rescue mission, particularly those involving K-9 partners. There are interviews with the handful of individualists who live in the area, including the reclusive Edward Campbell and the blind Cecil Moore. The restless Cole, who has a contentious relationship with his family, joins Mattie and Robo on the rugged mission. A dark discovery changes the search and amps up its urgency. Series fans will likely be pleased that the novel ends sweetly, with the anticipated wedding.
Tidy procedural with a canine accent.Pub Date: Oct. 8, 2024
ISBN: 9781639108947
Page Count: 256
Publisher: Crooked Lane
Review Posted Online: Aug. 17, 2024
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 15, 2024
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