A familiar story made fresh by the way Abel takes apart crooked Louisiana politics (is there any other kind?) and makes you...
It rains a lot more in New Orleans than in New York, but otherwise it's business as usual for Abel (The Blue Wall, 1996, etc.), who this time trains his gimlet eye for mobsters, bagmen, and crooked cops on the Big Easy.
Three years ago, A.D.A. Danny Chaisson's long-time patron Jimmy Boudrieux asked him to torpedo a case against a troublemaker who'd otherwise roll over on Jimmy. Danny, mindful that Jimmy had, among other favors, sent him to Tulane, did the dirty and resigned from his job the next day. Now he works for Jimmy, doing errands he'd rather not think about. When he's sent to pick up a suitcase from small-time crook Dewitt Foley and goes back into the restaurant on a just-remembered errand, he finds Foley and four others dead, in a massacre that might have been lifted from L.A. Confidential. Everything that follows, though, is pure Abel. There's Danny's slow dance among the cops looking to place him at the scene and the mobsters looking to nail down the loose ends by eliminating him. And there's Danny's faster dance with his ex-wife Helen, now one of Jimmy's lawyers; with Mickie Vega, the ATF agent he could love if only she'd quit presenting herself as a juvenile caseworker; and with Jimmy's trash-talking daughter Maura, whom he's just passing those long rainy nights with while he waits to see who punches his ticket first. The trail of the fatal gun takes Danny to some of the toughest ghettoes in the city, where Abel shows boys getting killed for trying to act like men, and his memories take him back to his father's suicide—a fate he has a hard time imagining he'll avoid.
A familiar story made fresh by the way Abel takes apart crooked Louisiana politics (is there any other kind?) and makes you care about every last one of the quick and the dead.Pub Date: Sept. 1, 2000
ISBN: 0-399-14662-8
Page Count: 400
Publisher: Putnam
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 15, 2000
An expert juggling act that ends with not one but two intercut trials. More, please.
His Clifton Chronicles (This Was a Man, 2017, etc.) complete, the indefatigable Archer launches a new series that follows a well-born police officer from his first assignment to (spoiler alert) his appointment as commissioner of the Metropolitan Police some volumes down the road.
William Warwick may have been born with a silver spoon in his mouth, but he’s done everything he can to declare his independence from his father, Sir Julian Warwick QC. When William, fresh out of King’s College with a degree in art history, announces his intention to enroll in Hendon Police College, his father realizes that he’ll have to count on William’s older sister, Grace, to carry on the family’s tradition in Her Majesty’s courts. Instead, guileless William patrols the streets of Lambeth until a chance remark lands him on DCI Bruce Lamont’s Art and Antiques unit under the watchful eye of Cmdr. Jack Hawksby. No fewer than four cases await his attention: the forger who signs first editions with the names of their famous authors; a series of even more accomplished forgeries of old masters paintings; a well-organized series of thefts of artworks by a gang whose leader prefers selling them back to the companies who’ve insured them and often don’t even report the thefts to the police; and a mysterious series of purchases of century-old silver by one Kevin Carter. His investigations take William across the path, and then into the bed, of Beth Rainsford, a research assistant at the Fitzmolean gallery, still reeling seven years after a priceless Rembrandt was stolen from its collection, most likely by landowner and self-styled farmer Miles Faulkner. As if to prevent William from getting even a moment’s sleep in between rounds of detection and decorous coupling, Beth unwillingly drags William into a fifth case, a 2-year-old murder whose verdict she has every reason to doubt. One of these cases will bring William up against Grace, whose withering cross-examination of him on the witness stand is a special highlight.
An expert juggling act that ends with not one but two intercut trials. More, please.Pub Date: Sept. 3, 2019
ISBN: 978-1-250-20076-1
Page Count: 336
Publisher: St. Martin's
Review Posted Online: June 16, 2019
Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 1, 2019
PROFILES
O'Brien proves to be the Oliver Stone of literature, reiterating the same Vietnam stories endlessly without adding any insight. Politician John Wade has just lost an election, and he and his wife, Kathy, have retired to a lakeside cabin to plan their future when she suddenly disappears. O'Brien manages to stretch out this simple premise by sticking in chapters consisting of quotes from various sources (both actual and fictional) that relate to John and Kathy. An unnamed author — an irritating device that recalls the better-handled but still imperfect "Tim O'Brien" narrator of The Things They Carried (1990) — also includes lengthy footnotes about his own experiences in Vietnam. While the sections covering John in the third person are dry, these first-person footnotes are unbearable. O'Brien uses a coy tone (it's as though he's constantly whispering "Ooooh, spooky!"), but there is no suspense: The reader is acquainted with Kathy for only a few pages before her disappearance, so it's impossible to work up any interest in her fate. The same could be said of John, even though he is the focus of the book. Flashbacks and quotes reveal that John was present at the infamous Thuan Yen massacre (for those too thick-headed to understand the connection to My Lai, O'Brien includes numerous real-life references). The symbolism here is beyond cloying. As a child John liked to perform magic tricks, and he was subsequently nicknamed "Sorcerer" by his fellow soldiers — he could make things disappear, get it? John has been troubled for some time. He used to spy on Kathy when they were in college, and his father's habit of calling the chubby boy "Jiggling John" apparently wounded him. All of this is awkwardly uncovered through a pretentious structure that cannot disguise the fact that there is no story here. Sinks like a stone.
Pub Date: Oct. 1, 1994
ISBN: 061870986X
Page Count: 320
Publisher: N/A
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 15, 1994
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