Thrills, gossip, sex, history, self-righteous indignation and hints of parallels to the contemporary rich and famous, all...
ADA Alexandra Cooper of Manhattan’s Sex Crimes Office struggles to keep up with real-life New York scandal in her 12th not-entirely-ripped-from-the-headlines case.
When a Ukrainian vessel loaded with illegal immigrants, including 30 women earmarked for the lucrative American sex industry, goes aground within sight of its destination, Alex is among the first law-enforcement officials at the scene. Her heart moved for the thousandth time by the survivors’ laboriously translated tales of brutal oppression, she is determined to spend every ounce of her energy, along with that of former U.S. Attorney Donovan Baynes’ Joint Trafficking Task Force, in the quest to learn who ensured that at least one of the Jane Does didn’t survive. But the city that never sleeps keeps supplying high-profile diversions. First Baynes’ classmate Ethan Leighton, a congressman from the Upper West Side, is picked up for a DUI. Then his mistress, Mexican immigrant Salma Zunega, and their love child Ana go missing after she’s repeatedly called 911 on him, then denied ever placing the calls for help. When Salma is next seen, she’s been stabbed to death and tossed down a well on the grounds of Gracie Mansion. (You won’t believe where Ana finally turns up.) Every politician in the city seems to be implicated, most of them inspired by unwilling tabloid hogs like Bernard Kerik, Eliot Spitzer and John Edwards. Even as she rehashes recent juicy scandals, Fairstein dishes out a steady stream of tourist-grade background info on Archibald Gracie and the mansion he built. But all this historical exposition, which often threatens to sink Alex’s cases (Lethal Legacy, 2009, etc.), becomes surprisingly relevant when a rose-shaped tattoo links high crimes and low, and Alex realizes that her distinguished colleagues are actually suspects.
Thrills, gossip, sex, history, self-righteous indignation and hints of parallels to the contemporary rich and famous, all whipped to a fine frenzy. Fairstein’s most potent cocktail since Entombed (2005).Pub Date: March 9, 2010
ISBN: 978-0-525-95161-2
Page Count: 416
Publisher: Dutton
Review Posted Online: Jan. 2, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 1, 2010
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
A smoothly written contemporary caper paired with a murder mystery and a little meet-the-Jetsons futurism. No one does...
Written under her real name and her pseudonym, two books in one from megaselling Roberts/Robb.
Book one: Laine Tavish, gorgeous redhead and owner of a small-town antique store, isn’t about to tell the cops that she knew the old man who was hit by a car right outside her shop. Just before he took his dying breath, she recognized Willy Young, partner in crime to Big Jack O’Hara, her father. Their biggest heist: millions of dollars in hot diamonds. Her father went to prison, but not Willy, whose last words were “left it for you.” What did he leave—and where? Enter Max Gannon, insurance investigator and all-around stud, with thick, wavy, run-your-fingers-through-it hair, tawny eyes that remind Laine of a tiger, and a delicious Georgia drawl. He beds Laine pronto, and they solve the case. But some of the diamonds are still missing. . . . Book two: it’s 50 years later, and New York traffic is slower than ever: just try getting a helicab on a rainy day. But Samantha Gannon, author of a bestseller called Hot Rocks based on her grandparents’ experiences in the long-ago case, eventually makes it home from the airport to find her house-sitter Andrea dead, throat cut. Another investigation begins, spearheaded by Eve Dallas, a tough-talking but very appealing New York cop married to Roarke, a rich, eccentric genius who just barely manages to stay on the right side of the law. Is the murderer after the rest of the diamonds? And is he or she related to the master thief who betrayed Samantha’s great-grandfather? There are more burning questions, and Eve wants answers—but, first, get Central on the telelink and program the Autochef for pastrami on rye.
A smoothly written contemporary caper paired with a murder mystery and a little meet-the-Jetsons futurism. No one does Suspense Lite better than Nora.Pub Date: Sept. 1, 2003
ISBN: 0-399-15106-0
Page Count: 448
Publisher: Putnam
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 15, 2003
© Copyright 2025 Kirkus Media LLC. All Rights Reserved.
Follow
Popular in this Genre
We can’t wait for you to join Kirkus!
It’s free and takes less than 10 seconds!
Already have an account? Log in.
OR
Sign in with GoogleTrouble signing in? Retrieve credentials.
Welcome Back!
OR
Sign in with GoogleTrouble signing in? Retrieve credentials.
