A fast-paced and exciting work of crime fiction.
After a drug cartel abducts his sister, a Kansas judge puts everything on the line to find her in this debut thriller.
In 2018, when Judge Benjamin Joel begins the murder trial of Vaughn Rummell, he doesn’t know that his own life is about to change drastically. The accused is a grandson of a drug kingpin, and his conviction seems certain despite the fact that he has a team of high-powered lawyers on his side. Then a group of masked, armed men abduct Benjamin, his sister, his children, and his fiancee, Keri. After an intense fight that leaves several cartel operatives dead, Benjamin reaches an agreement with the kidnappers: They’ll free everyone except for the judge’s sister, who will only be let go after he dismisses the case against Rummell. But before the verdict can be handed down, Benjamin embarks on a mission to locate and free his sibling on his own. With Keri’s assistance, he steals files from a local detective and tracks down multiple cartel members, locating safe houses, money, and drugs while untangling a web of allies and enemies. Ruhl’s action-packed thriller effectively keeps readers engaged as the characters travel through a messy world of organized crime. The narrative keeps up a swift pace, as in this passage, after Benjamin manages to shoot one of his abductors: “He had some fight left in him, it seemed, which wasn’t all bad. I didn’t want him to die, I wanted to get information out of him. But dammit—I was running out of time.” The excitement rarely wanes, though the narrator does veer into long-winded tangents about court procedure at times, and it’s sometimes difficult to keep up with who’s who in the ever expanding cast. Still, readers will enjoy how the judge unearths secrets and makes connections, and the ending is satisfying.
A fast-paced and exciting work of crime fiction.Pub Date: Oct. 26, 2021
ISBN: 979-8481908014
Page Count: 352
Publisher: Independently Published
Review Posted Online: Nov. 3, 2021
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 1, 2022
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
High art meets low life in a tale a lot more sympathetic to the latter.
Someone is stalking the streets of Lt. Eve Dallas’s New York, intent on bringing new life to sex workers by snuffing out their old ones.
In 2061, prostitutes are called licensed companions, and that’s Leesa Culver’s job description when she’s accosted by a plausible-looking artist who wants to hire her as a model for the night. Before the night is over, she’s been drugged, strangled, costumed, and posed as an uncanny replica of Vermeer’s Girl With a Pearl Earring. The shock of the crime is deepened by the murder the following night of licensed companion Bobby Ren, whose body is discovered at an art gallery entrance costumed and posed as Gainsborough’s Blue Boy. The killer clearly has an obsessive agenda, a rapid-fire timetable, and access to unlimited financial resources that have allowed him to commission expensive custom-made outfits for the victims. This last detail both marks his power and points to the way Dallas, her gazillionaire husband, Roarke, and her sidekick, Det. Delia Peabody, will track him down by methodically narrowing the field of consumers who’ve purchased the costly costumes. After identifying the guilty party two-thirds of the way through the story, they’ll still face an uphill battle convicting a killer with no conscience, no respect for the law, and a budget that would easily cover the means to jump bail, remove his ankle tracker, and hire a private jet to escape to a foreign land with no extradition treaty. Robb keeps it all consistently absorbing by sweating every procedural detail along with her heroine. Only Dallas’ climactic interrogation of her prisoner is a letdown, because it’s perfectly obvious how she’s going to wangle a confession out of him.
High art meets low life in a tale a lot more sympathetic to the latter.Pub Date: Sept. 2, 2025
ISBN: 9781250370822
Page Count: 368
Publisher: St. Martin's
Review Posted Online: May 16, 2025
Kirkus Reviews Issue: June 15, 2025
The best news of all: The climax leaves the door open to further reports from the hilariously misnamed British Intelligence.
A series of mounting complications leads to yet another fight to the death between the discarded intelligence agents of Slough House and the morally bankrupt head of MI5.
As Jackson Lamb’s motley crew on Aldersgate Street struggles to cope with the deaths of River Cartwright’s grandfather and mentor, intelligence veteran David Cartwright, and their dim, beloved colleague Min Harper, new troubles are brewing. Diana Taverner, who runs the British Intelligence Service from Regent’s Park, is being blackmailed by former MP Peter Judd to do his bidding. Nothing untoward about that, of course, but this time, Judd’s demands, backed by a compromising tape recording, are more pressing than usual. So Diana reconvenes the Brains Trust—Al Hawke, Avril Potts, Daisy Wessex, and their ex-boss Charles Cornell Stamoran—whose last assignment was to serve as the contact for psychopathic IRA informant Dougie Malone while turning a blind eye to his multiple rapes and murders, which were really none of the Crown’s business. Taverner’s new assignment for the Brains Trust is the assassination of Judd. Since all these developments are filtered through the riotously cynical lens of Herron’s imagination, nothing goes as planned, and when the smoke clears, the fatalities don’t include Judd. Now that Judd knows he has as much reason to fear Taverner as she does to fear him, Lamb offers to broker a peace meeting between them which Slough House computer geek Roddy Ho will keep secret by knocking out 37 security cameras around Taverner’s dwelling. What could possibly go wrong?
The best news of all: The climax leaves the door open to further reports from the hilariously misnamed British Intelligence.Pub Date: Sept. 9, 2025
ISBN: 9781641297264
Page Count: 352
Publisher: Soho Crime
Review Posted Online: May 30, 2025
Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 1, 2025
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