A routine whodunit in the mold of Christie and Sayers, both of whom are cited. Only Maria, outspoken and matter-of-fact,...
Maria Kallio may have taken herself out of the Helsinki police, but she finds when she’s confronted with another murder that she can’t take the detective out of herself.
No longer an officer with the Violent Crime Unit but not quite a lawyer yet either, Maria has moved in with math student Antti Sarkela while he works on his dissertation in the Tapiola region of Espoo. The setting may be idyllic, but the people aren’t. When Antti brings Maria to a party given by the family his sister has married into, the vibe is awkward since the Hänninens are still mourning their daughter and sister Sanna, who drowned last spring shortly after downing serious quantities of alcohol and prescription drugs. Sanna’s brother Kimmo has gotten engaged to Armi Mäenpää, a chatty nurse with boundary issues. So Maria isn’t looking forward to having a heart-to-heart with her the day after the party. She’s got nothing to worry about, though, because by that afternoon Armi is dead, strangled, presumably by someone who was worried about her big mouth. Ignoring the fact that she’s no longer with the police, Maria makes the rounds of the obligatory suspects—mostly members of Kimmo’s family—from Kimmo’s father, Henrik, a businessman who’s distant in more ways than one, to his much older half brother Risto, an engineer whose marriage won’t bear close scrutiny. There’ll be a trip to an S&M club Kimmo frequented and a climactic confrontation in which even the killer can’t resist pointing out that Maria’s no longer wearing a badge or carrying a gun.
A routine whodunit in the mold of Christie and Sayers, both of whom are cited. Only Maria, outspoken and matter-of-fact, stands out from the crowd.Pub Date: May 14, 2013
ISBN: 978-1-611099645
Page Count: 280
Publisher: Amazon Crossing
Review Posted Online: March 30, 2013
Kirkus Reviews Issue: April 15, 2013
No more meeting-cute for romancer Hoag. Here, couples bond over body bags as the author turns her deft hand to a grisly crime thriller, skillfully constructed if less than completely page- turning. In Night Sins (1995), the first of Hoag's two-part combo, hard-nosed agent Megan O'Malley came to rural Deer Lake, Minnesota, fell in love with hard-nosed police chief Mitch Holt, and together with him tracked down Garrett Wright, the evil genius who kidnapped eight-year-old Josh Kirkwood and then beat up Megan, breaking nearly every bone in her hand—at least twice. This time, hard-nosed prosecutor Ellen North, who left the Twin Cities to get away from big-city violence, wants to rescue Josh and prosecute Wright to the full extent of the law. Complicating her case, though, is, first, handsome southerner Jay Butler Brooks, a millionaire author of true-crime novels whose face has been on the cover of People and whose sexy, smoky drawl insinuates itself under Ellen's tough exterior. (Brooks himself has come to Deer Lake to escape his own personal devils and to cash in on a great story, but he'll stay to be redeemed by Ellen's courage and dedication.) The second complication is young Josh himself, who's returned but is too traumatized to testify. Third is Wright's greasy big-time defense attorney, Tony Costello, who used to be Ellen's lover before he betrayed her. Fourth, no one believes that mild-mannered Professor Wright, an acknowledged community good-guy, could have done such a terrible thing. And, finally, someone keeps littering the icy Minnesota landscape with other bodies, including one of another kidnapped boy. After a lot of gut-wrenching dedication by Ellen, Jay, Megan, and Mitch, there's a bloody if positive resolution and both couples limp off into the sunset. This time out, Hoag abandons some of her outrageous romantic style to investigate more serious moral issues. Worthy, but much less fun.
Pub Date: March 1, 1996
ISBN: 0-553-09959-0
Page Count: 480
Publisher: Bantam
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Dec. 15, 1995
Readers will love the quirky characters in this clever yarn. Pendergast and Coldmoon make an excellent pair.
The 18th installment in the Pendergast series by Preston and Child (City of Endless Night, 2018, etc.) gives the hero a partner in the hunt for a strange killer.
A woman walks a dog in a Miami Beach cemetery, and her dog finds a human heart. Soon more hearts turn up at the gravesites of women thought to have committed suicide a decade before. The FBI assigns agents Pendergast and Coldmoon to work with the Miami PD on the case. Pendergast is highly successful in closing cases on his own but “was about as rogue as they came,” and suspects tend not to survive his investigations. Agent Coldmoon’s secret assignment is to keep a close eye on his partner, “a bomb waiting to go off,” who tends to do something “out of left field, or of questionable ethics, or even specifically against orders.” The current victims are women whose throats have been slit and breastbones split open to remove their hearts, all in quick and expert fashion. The killer leaves notes at the graves, signed “Mister Brokenhearts.” This kind of weirdness is in Pendergast’s wheelhouse, as he’s an odd sort himself, quite outside the FBI culture. Rather like Sherlock Holmes, he sees patterns that others miss. He’s tall, gaunt, dresses like an undertaker, and always seems to have more money than the average FBI agent. Both men are great characters—Coldmoon curses in Lakota and prefers “tarry black” coffee that Pendergast likens to “poison sumac” and “battery acid.” They wonder about the earlier deaths and whether the women had really hanged themselves. For answers they require exhumations, new autopsies, and a medical examiner’s close examinations of the hyoid bones. Meanwhile the deeply troubled killer ponders his next action, which he hopes will one day wipe away his pain and guilt and bring atonement. Alligators, bullets, and a sinkhole contribute to a nerve-wracking finish.
Readers will love the quirky characters in this clever yarn. Pendergast and Coldmoon make an excellent pair.Pub Date: Dec. 31, 2018
ISBN: 978-1-5387-4720-9
Page Count: 352
Publisher: Grand Central Publishing
Review Posted Online: Dec. 22, 2018
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 15, 2019
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