DARK SKY ISLAND

Name: DARK SKY ISLAND
Author: Lara Dearman
ISBN: 978-1-68331-752-4

by Lara Dearman ‧ RELEASE DATE: Sept. 11, 2018

Dearman effortlessly evokes the island’s atmosphere, but this caseload has more felonies and felons than a pickpockets’...

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Mysteries old and new jostle for attention in Dearman’s second chilly valentine to the Channel Islands.

Not much happens on tiny Sark Island, and you’d think that the discovery of a skeleton, dead who knows how long, in a cavelike tomb on Derrible Bay would be the biggest story of the year. As it turns out, it’s not even the biggest story of the day. Guernsey News reporter Jenny Dorey, who’s made the trip to Sark to cover the story of the old bones, finds herself swiftly enmeshed in a more recent mystery: Someone has cut the throat of retired gardener Reg Carré. The man was an old curmudgeon, but, as his self-styled acquaintance Malcolm Perré sagely tells Jenny, “Round here, see, if falling out with someone led to murder, we’d all be fucking dead.” Neither Jenny nor Guernsey DCI Michael Gilbert, who’s already worked with her on one case (The Devil’s Claw, 2018), believes that the old man’s death on the same day the old bones came to light is coincidental. What disturbs Jenny even more is the two mysteries’ possible connections to the sudden decision of reclusive billionaire Corey Monroe, who bought the neighboring island of Brecqhou five years ago, to offer her an interview or to the death several years back of Charlie Dorey, the father whose drowning now looks more and more suspicious. But Jenny’s digging is bound to exact a price—as newcomer Tuesday Jones, who’s only lived on Sark for 25 years, advises her, “Have the News send over someone who’s less likely to get us all killed”—though this time, Michael will pay a higher price than she does.

Dearman effortlessly evokes the island’s atmosphere, but this caseload has more felonies and felons than a pickpockets’ convention. Sark’s three square miles are home to 450 souls, and by the fadeout you’ll be convinced that every single one of them is dirty.

Pub Date: Sept. 11, 2018

ISBN: 978-1-68331-752-4

Page Count: 288

Publisher: Crooked Lane

Review Posted Online: June 17, 2018

Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 1, 2018

Categories:

MYSTERY & DETECTIVE | DETECTIVES & PRIVATE INVESTIGATORS

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A CONSPIRACY OF BONES

by Kathy Reichs ‧ RELEASE DATE: March 17, 2020

Forget about solving all these crimes; the signal triumph here is (spoiler) the heroine’s survival.

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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

Categories:

- BOOK REVIEW
FIRE AND BONES
by Kathy Reichs

- BOOK REVIEW
COLD, COLD BONES
by Kathy Reichs

- BOOK REVIEW
THE BONE CODE
by Kathy Reichs

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BADLANDS

by C.J. Box ‧ RELEASE DATE: July 28, 2015

A suspenseful, professional-grade north country procedural whose heroine, a deft mix of compassion and attitude, would be...

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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.