She’s a murder suspect; she’s a maniac; and she makes this thriller a worthwhile read.
In this novel, which spans decades and more than half the United States, a police detective searches for a killer.
In the late 1960s, Easterner Reginald Byrd enrolls in a Colorado junior college but spends more time hanging out with a motorcycle gang than studying. The Silent Commandos gang is “led by a hard ass named Christopher Trent Mascaro.” One night, Officer Steven Churchfield parks his cruiser behind Reg’s car as the student sits in it drinking bourbon. Reg impulsively exits his car and shoots and kills the policeman. Mascaro arranges for Reg to take on a new identity and get a job as a security officer at a Raleigh, North Carolina, bank. Now known as Mike Breed, the cop killer plunges into a relationship with a cute co-worker named Daisy Phillips, who knows nothing about his past. “Seasons changed again and again and again without a word. Birthdays also came and went and Daisy was about to have another one” when she reveals to Reg that she’s pregnant. Unhappy with the news, he abandons Daisy and heads to Colorado Springs, leaving her to have the child on her own and give up the baby for adoption. Decades after Reg killed the policeman, Raleigh Detective Marc Allen, an investigator of the apparent suicide of self-proclaimed murderer Hank Hickox, heads to Colorado Springs for a new job. Marc thinks Hank’s daughter, Teri, is the real killer, not her father. She changes her identity and appearance and follows the detective out west with her multimillion-dollar inheritance. Once in Colorado, she searches for real estate, a gun range, and Marc. One of his friends is attractive, blond Hannah Hunt, an accomplished artist who was raised by the Hayneses, an African American family, after her own clan was killed in a car crash when she was a child. Hanna considers Rampart Haynes, who’s one year her senior, her brother, and he becomes her protector after a freak accident leaves her only able to talk in song titles. The faux siblings are friends with Tatiana Rice, who becomes in rapid succession Marc’s neighbor, dogwalker, and girlfriend—a fact that does not go unnoticed by Teri. As Teri stalks Marc, he looks for the killer in the decades-old cold Churchfield case.
The names of popular musical artists and their songs are laced throughout Hirshland’s thriller sequel, and they skillfully root the story in various time periods. Also prevalent but with less of a reason are mentions of characters’ bathroom visits—for example, “The tacos he had recently devoured were making quick work through his system which necessitated a stop at the nearest men’s room”—and players winking (but not at the same time). Information on such topics as doodle dogs, boxing, and the Air Force doesn’t advance the tale. Except for the dangerous Teri’s thoughts and actions, the book is humorless. But when she’s the star of the story, the pages turn quickly. Questionable bits include Reg getting $1,000 for Christmas as a teen from his parents—that would be nearly $8,000 in today’s dollars—and the text mislabeling the statement “their shit don’t stink” as a pun. The writing could be sharper, but, again, Teri remains absolutely riveting.
She’s a murder suspect; she’s a maniac; and she makes this thriller a worthwhile read.Pub Date: Jan. 21, 2022
ISBN: 978-1-949472-40-0
Page Count: 388
Publisher: N/A
Review Posted Online: March 28, 2022
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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