by Kevin E. Hatt ‧ RELEASE DATE: Dec. 6, 2013
Familiar genre traits coupled with innovative touches make this an exceptional novel and a worthy series opener.
Awards & Accolades
Our Verdict
GET IT
An Englishman looking into a friend’s murder stumbles upon drug deals and dealers, putting himself and others in peril in Hatt’s debut thriller, the first in a series.
Anesthetic and recovery practitioner Haszard (he prefers not using his first name, which is never given) hears of a murder near the hospital where he works. The victim was Pauline Vickers, a nurse and Haszard’s acquaintance; they also had a one-night stand. Now Haszard is determined to find her killer. But questioning associates uncovers more questions: He’d never known Pauline to do drugs, yet he learns she was a cocaine user with a sizable stash and was telling others of a possible shipment. Haszard’s investigation, with help from his new love interest, Sabrina, and Pauline’s boyfriend, Ed, leads to more bodies, a hodgepodge of suspects—including the hospital’s chief of security, who warns him to stop with the gumshoe routine—and someone shooting at Haszard. At its core, Hatt’s novel is a typical detective story, but the atypical investigation from a nondetective gives it a refreshing vibe. Thriller fans will recognize many elements—the mysterious villain, a drug dealer known only as “The Ghost” who’s supplying people with a high-grade cocaine, and Haszard’s gradual distrust of others, even those who’re helping him. But the story has just as many unusual characteristics: This “detective” has a strange predilection for snakes and fears running into his ex, Debbie, or her equally intense friend, Harriet, just as much as the murderer. He stakes out a suspect’s home, only to be bored for a couple of uneventful evenings. Some of Haszard’s interrogations become repetitive, though, since the info he picks up is much of the same: Many inform him of Pauline’s drug habit or her surprising affiliation with prostitutes. But, with consistent reminders of the ongoing case, Hatt steers his story clear of any lulls, even when Haszard is spending his time entangled in his new romance with Sabrina. Hatt also excels at generating suspense, as in a scene in which Haszard, Ed and Ed’s cohorts chase a man into an old building with dilapidated, unstable floors.
Familiar genre traits coupled with innovative touches make this an exceptional novel and a worthy series opener.Pub Date: Dec. 6, 2013
ISBN: 978-1490363486
Page Count: 396
Publisher: CreateSpace
Review Posted Online: Aug. 29, 2014
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
Share your opinion of this book
More by Kevin E. Hatt
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
by J.A. Jance ‧ RELEASE DATE: April 2, 2019
Proficient but eminently predictable. Amid all the time shifts and embedded backstories, the most surprising feature is how...
Awards & Accolades
Likes
29
Our Verdict
GET IT
New York Times Bestseller
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
Share your opinion of this book
More by J.A. Jance
BOOK REVIEW
by J.A. Jance
BOOK REVIEW
by J.A. Jance
BOOK REVIEW
by J.A. Jance
by Patricia Cornwell ‧ RELEASE DATE: Oct. 23, 2007
Proceed at your own risk.
Pioneering pathologist Kay Scarpetta (Trace, 2004, etc.) goes up against a wraithlike killer whose self-appointed mission is to “relieve others of their suffering.”
Practice, practice, practice. If only 16-year-old South Carolina tennis phenom Drew Martin had stuck to the court instead of going off to Rome to party, her tortured corpse wouldn’t be baffling the Italian authorities, headed inexplicably by medico legale Capt. Ottorino Poma, and the International Investigative Response team, which includes both Scarpetta and her lover, forensic psychologist Benton Wesley. But the young woman’s murder and the gruesome forensic riddles it poses are something of a sideshow to the main event: the obligatory maundering of the continuing cast. Wesley still won’t leave Boston for the woman he tepidly insists he loves. Scarpetta’s niece, computer whiz Lucy Farinelli, continues to be jealously protective of her aunt. Scarpetta’s investigator, Pete Marino, is so besotted by the trailer-trash pickup who’s pushing his buttons that he does some terrible things. And Scarpetta herself is threatened by every misfit in the known universe, from a disgruntled mortician to oracular TV shrink Marilyn Self. Cornwell’s trademark forensics have long since been matched by Karin Slaughter and CSI. What’s most distinctive about this venerable franchise is the kitchen-sink plotting; the soap-opera melodrama that prevents any given volume from coming to a satisfying end; and the emphasis on titanic battles between Scarpetta and a series of Antichrists.
Proceed at your own risk.Pub Date: Oct. 23, 2007
ISBN: 978-0-399-15393-8
Page Count: 416
Publisher: Putnam
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 1, 2007
Share your opinion of this book
More About This Book
BOOK TO SCREEN
© Copyright 2024 Kirkus Media LLC. All Rights Reserved.
Hey there, book lover.
We’re glad you found a book that interests you!
We can’t wait for you to join Kirkus!
It’s free and takes less than 10 seconds!
Already have an account? Log in.
OR
Sign in with GoogleTrouble signing in? Retrieve credentials.
Welcome Back!
OR
Sign in with GoogleTrouble signing in? Retrieve credentials.
Don’t fret. We’ll find you.