There’s a ton of filler but too few chills in this by-the-numbers thriller.
After escaping an attacker, a young woman teams up with a sexy FBI agent to bring him down in this series opener.
When Sacramento radio personality Daisy Dawson is pulled into an alleyway by a gunman in disguise, she manages to escape, but not before pulling a locket off his neck. The locket is distinctive and draws the attention of FBI Special Agent and linguist Gideon Reynolds. Gideon recognizes the design, and to his horror, he knows the girl whose picture is inside the locket. Turns out that Gideon was a member of The Church of Second Eden until the age of 13, when he escaped after killing one of the leaders in self-defense. He’s told most of his story (minus the killing) to his boss and has repeatedly tried to get the FBI to reopen his case, but the group moved soon after he escaped and hasn’t turned up since. Until now. Sparks immediately fly between Daisy and Gideon, and Gideon isn’t too upset to find out he’ll need to be her bodyguard until they can neutralize her attacker. Daisy also proves to be a big help in tracking down other surviving members of the cult. Unfortunately, Daisy’s attacker, who fancies himself a master of disguise, hasn’t given up on her yet, and he has a basement dungeon waiting just for her, as detailed in lurid passages in which Rose attempts to fashion a background explaining the origins of the man's bloody proclivities. Unfortunately, he never really rises above serial killer central casting and at times devolves into caricature. Refreshingly, however, Daisy isn’t set dressing, and she’s no wilting flower: She’s trained in self-defense, offers plenty of help during the investigation, and is a genuinely kind human being. Additionally, Daisy and Gideon’s romance, while quick in developing, still evolves naturally, and Rose gets kudos for emphasizing safe sex. However, it’s made clear early on that Daisy is in AA, but her alcoholism doesn’t seem to serve any other function but to make her more sympathetic, and her background, with its many, many convolutions, will stretch reader credulity. It’s too bad that two such likable characters are dropped into the middle of such a ho-hum story.
There’s a ton of filler but too few chills in this by-the-numbers thriller.Pub Date: Feb. 12, 2019
ISBN: 978-0-399-58672-9
Page Count: 624
Publisher: Berkley
Review Posted Online: Nov. 12, 2018
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Dec. 1, 2018
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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