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LAST FERRY HOME

Respected noir veteran Harrington (The Rat Machine, 2013, etc.) returns with a tough and thoughtful novel about grief and...

Still traumatized by the death of his wife in a sailing accident 18 months ago, San Francisco homicide detective Michael O'Higgins is further tested on his first day back on the job by a gruesome double murder.

Rishi Chaundhry, an Indian man, and his family's sexy young nanny, Bharti Kumar, were both stabbed to death in their Nob Hill mansion. Rishi's aloof father, Nirad, a billionaire favored to become India's next prime minister, blames the killings on Rishi's distraught widow, Asha. He claims she acted in a jealous rage after learning her husband was carrying on with Bharti. In an odd coincidence, O'Higgins had just met and been drawn to Asha on a therapeutic ferry ride he took to deal with his fear of open water. (He still blames himself for the death of his wife, whom he was unable to save.) The more intensely he becomes involved with Asha, whose children are snatched and flown off to India by her father-in-law, the more his friends on the force worry about his psychological fitness. An Afghanistan veteran, the detective "regretted that he was not back at war, where things would be simple to understand." But when O'Higgins is attacked by an intruder sent for Bharti's cellphone, the possibility that Nirad had something to do with the killings grows stronger. While Harrington's understatement can be a strength, the emotional payoff is a bit more muted than one might hope for. And does the author really have his protagonist praise Michael Connelly, who wrote a blurb that's used on Harrington's books? But this is still strong, hard-edged stuff by a writer in complete control of the narrative.

Respected noir veteran Harrington (The Rat Machine, 2013, etc.) returns with a tough and thoughtful novel about grief and its consequences.

Pub Date: March 13, 2018

ISBN: 978-1-947993-09-9

Page Count: 320

Publisher: Polis Books

Review Posted Online: Jan. 22, 2018

Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 1, 2018

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BADLANDS

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

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THE A LIST

Proficient but eminently predictable. Amid all the time shifts and embedded backstories, the most surprising feature is how...

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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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