by Lara Dearman ‧ RELEASE DATE: Jan. 9, 2018
Everyone in the parish of Vale is sorry that health care student Amanda Guille is dead at 18, and everyone is certain that...
A Guernsey-bred reporter who’s retreated from the criminal cobwebs of London to her birthplace finds the Channel Islands just as deep in malfeasance and a lot deeper in denial.
Everyone in the parish of Vale is sorry that health care student Amanda Guille is dead at 18, and everyone is certain that her drowning was accidental. Only Jennifer Dorey suspects otherwise, and that’s only because of a fluke: Margaret Dorey, the mother whose recent widowing has combined with Jenny’s handling of an exposé that turned too hot to handle to bring her back to Vale, happens in conversation to recall the similar case of her friend Elizabeth Mahy, who drowned in a bathing pool way back in 1966. A little digging discloses a history of four other young women who’ve drowned in the 50 years since—and if that doesn’t sound like very many, well, “it’s a very small island.” Jenny works on the story assiduously, carefully sourcing every new development and resolutely avoiding sensationalizing the events. But when she discovers an incontrovertible link among the six victims, Brian Ozanne, her editor at the Guernsey News, runs headlong from the story for reasons that can’t be good. Luckily, Jenny has already found a more receptive colleague in a surprising place: the local police station, where DCI Michael Gilbert, who’d openly invited her participation from the beginning, takes her a great deal more seriously. It’s a heroic stand considering that the revelation of half a century of unpunished murders will be laid on his department and perhaps put paid to his career. In the end, though, the top prize for valor goes to Jenny, who refuses to walk away from the case and confronts the killer in a last-ditch effort to save yet another victim.Pub Date: Jan. 9, 2018
ISBN: 978-1-68331-456-1
Page Count: 336
Publisher: Crooked Lane
Review Posted Online: Oct. 15, 2017
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Nov. 1, 2017
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by Kathy Reichs ‧ RELEASE DATE: March 17, 2020
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
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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...
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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