A gritty, assured mystery debut, right up to its satisfying final notes.
A disheartened private eye does a favor that puts him on wrong side of a dangerous criminal organization in Vaughn’s crime novel.
In 2017 middle-aged Los Angeles private investigator Ellis Dunaway hasn’t had a decent case in ages. His secretary, Reshma, is likely to quit soon, and his once-promising career as a TV writer is so far in the past, it feels like it never happened. He can’t help but keep tabs on Kent Moran, a writer friend who seems to accrue accolades by the day, while Ellis just accrues debt and regret. When a nightclub-owning acquaintance, Terry Montero, asks him for a favor, Ellis quickly agrees; aside from snorting cocaine and listening to pop songs on the radio of an old Porsche his dead father left him, he doesn’t have very much to do. Terry wants Ellis to check on a rental property where he allowed a colleague, Douglas Stefanidis, to crash. Terry hasn’t heard from the guy in weeks and would like to resume renting out the house if it’s empty. The search for Stefanidis becomes a wide-ranging investigation involving porn stars and local criminals who may be involved with the Black Fist—a cartel involved in money laundering, drug trafficking, and more. Vaughn’s jaded protagonist has just enough ruefulness and ambition to make this LA noir click. The pacing is brisk, and the characters are mostly entertainingly seedy. However, when Ellis shows a spark of humanity—he truly cares about his secretary’s son, for instance—the writing truly shines. Vaughn efficiently renders the California settings, although listing every song playing on the radio is almost comically overdone: “ ‘Breakout’ by Swing Out Sister. After that, ‘(Everything I Do) I Do It for You’ by Bryan Adams came on. The song was released on two albums simultaneously in 1991….” Some chapters start with quotes from Ellis’ father, a bestselling author and private investigator. Like other aspects of the story, the father’s words ring true and evoke an era of reminiscent of Michael Connelly’s Harry Bosch books.
A gritty, assured mystery debut, right up to its satisfying final notes.Pub Date: Aug. 18, 2023
ISBN: 979-8986531908
Page Count: 290
Publisher: Amazon Digital Services LLC
Review Posted Online: July 31, 2023
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Oct. 1, 2023
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 vivid, exciting page-turner from one of our most interesting authors of historical fiction.
When a man accused of rape turns up dead, an Early American town seeks justice amid rumors and controversy.
Lawhon’s fifth work of historical fiction is inspired by the true story and diaries of midwife Martha Ballard of Hallowell, Maine, a character she brings to life brilliantly here. As Martha tells her patient in an opening chapter set in 1789, “You need not fear….In all my years attending women in childbirth, I have never lost a mother.” This track record grows in numerous compelling scenes of labor and delivery, particularly one in which Martha has to clean up after the mistakes of a pompous doctor educated at Harvard, one of her nemeses in a town that roils with gossip and disrespect for women’s abilities. Supposedly, the only time a midwife can testify in court is regarding paternity when a woman gives birth out of wedlock—but Martha also takes the witness stand in the rape case against a dead man named Joshua Burgess and his living friend Col. Joseph North, whose role as judge in local court proceedings has made the victim, Rebecca Foster, reluctant to make her complaint public. Further complications are numerous: North has control over the Ballard family's lease on their property; Rebecca is carrying the child of one of her rapists; Martha’s son was seen fighting with Joshua Burgess on the day of his death. Lawhon weaves all this into a richly satisfying drama that moves suspensefully between childbed, courtroom, and the banks of the Kennebec River. The undimmed romance between 40-something Martha and her husband, Ephraim, adds a racy flair to the proceedings. Knowing how rare the quality of their relationship is sharpens the intensity of Martha’s gaze as she watches the romantic lives of her grown children unfold. As she did with Nancy Wake in Code Name Hélène (2020), Lawhon creates a stirring portrait of a real-life heroine and, as in all her books, includes an endnote with detailed background.
A vivid, exciting page-turner from one of our most interesting authors of historical fiction.Pub Date: Dec. 5, 2023
ISBN: 9780385546874
Page Count: 448
Publisher: Doubleday
Review Posted Online: Aug. 12, 2023
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 15, 2023
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