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SINNER MAN

Block telegraphs every single plot twist shortly before it arrives, and the results are pulpy, ritualistic, and satisfying—a...

Fans impatient for the latest from prolific Block (The Girl with the Deep Blue Eyes, 2015, etc.) will rejoice at the rediscovery of his very first novel, first published in 1968, eight years after he finished writing it, as Savage Lover.

Both titles fit the story as snugly as the shell of a hard-boiled egg. Danbury, Connecticut, insurance salesman Donald Barshter slugs his wife, Ellen, the wrong way during one of their periodic domestic tiffs, and she doesn’t get up. After briefly entertaining the idea of phoning the police, Don decides instead to stuff the body into a closet all weekend till he can tap his bank account Monday morning and then head for Buffalo—big enough to get lost in, small enough to keep from running into anyone likely to recognize him. Once ensconced in the Malmsly Hotel, he studiously adopts the role of Nathaniel Crowley, the new tough guy in town, picking a fight with a hapless local, paying an available chambermaid for sex, and cultivating the friendship of Tony Quince, a barfly whose interest in him sends him to Lou Baron, who pretty much runs things in Buffalo. Baron offers Crowley a job tending bar at Round Seven, where it’s understood that half his earnings will come from robbing the till. So far, so peaceful, but hardly has Crowley settled into his sinecure, following evenings at Round Seven with nights under the covers with game blonde Anne Bishop as he gradually becomes the hard case he pretended to be, than an unwelcome complication arises. Baron, Quince informs Crowley, is on his way out, and Crowley must pick whose side to take in the coming blood bath: the old boss who got him started or the competitor who’s tipped him off.

Block telegraphs every single plot twist shortly before it arrives, and the results are pulpy, ritualistic, and satisfying—a guilty pleasure packed into a time capsule from 1960.

Pub Date: Nov. 8, 2016

ISBN: 978-1-78565-134-2

Page Count: 240

Publisher: Hard Case Crime

Review Posted Online: Aug. 15, 2016

Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 1, 2016

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A CONSPIRACY OF BONES

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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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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