Not surprisingly, the case ripped from the headlines is much more absorbing than the tale of restaurant malfeasance and...
There’s no peace for Manhattan Sex Crimes prosecutor Alexandra Cooper, whose vacation on the Riviera is interrupted by two crimes, one outside her bailiwick, one inside, and both very uncomfortable indeed.
After a gratuitous brush with a handful of skulls left outside the restaurant owned by her sweetie Luc Rouget, Alex learns of a far more disturbing development when the body of Lisette Honfleur, who’d been helping Luc with the books at Le Relais a Mougins, is fished from Fontmerle Pond. No one’s asking Alex to investigate Lisette’s murder, but she can’t help being concerned about how close the dead girl might have been to Luc, especially since she had a matchbox labeled “LUTECE,” the legendary New York restaurant Luc plans to reopen, in her pocket. Before Alex can do more than wonder about the murder, she’s abruptly reeled back to Manhattan by her boss, New York County District Attorney Paul Battaglia. Blanca Robles, a Guatemalan chambermaid at the Eurotel, has accused hotel guest Mohammed Gil-Darsin, head of the World Economic Bureau and aspiring president of Ivory Coast, of rape, and she’s got the DNA evidence to prove it—or at least to prove that there was a sexual encounter. As Blanca’s credibility plummets, Fairstein (Silent Mercy, 2011, etc.) creates a compelling narrative by the simple expedient of plundering news stories about the remarkably similar accusations against Dominique Strauss-Kahn. But lest Alex assume she can forget about Lisette now that she’s up to her neck in this new case, the corpse of unemployed waiter Luigi Calamari is pulled from Brooklyn’s Gowanus Canal with a matchbox marked “LUTECE” in his pocket, threatening to cut off Alex’s romance with Luc at the root.
Not surprisingly, the case ripped from the headlines is much more absorbing than the tale of restaurant malfeasance and imperiled love. Alex’s 14th is distinctly below average for this bestselling series.Pub Date: July 10, 2012
ISBN: 978-0-525-95263-3
Page Count: 400
Publisher: Dutton
Review Posted Online: June 16, 2012
Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 1, 2012
Easy to read, smoothly put together. A good airport book.
An angry ex-wife is stalking a young, innocent fiancee who is a carbon copy of her former self…or so it seems.
The use of a multiviewpoint, chronologically complex narrative to create suspense by purposely misleading the reader is a really, really popular device. Two words: Gone Girl. While we are not the fools we once were and now assume immediately that we are being played, the question is whether we still take pleasure in the twists and revelations that follow. Pekkanen (The Perfect Neighbors, 2016, etc.) and Hendricks’ debut collaboration falls into the first wife/second wife subgenre of this type of story (e.g., The Girl Before, The Last Mrs. Parrish). In all of these, an unbelievably handsome, wildly successful, secretive, rigid, orderly, and controlling husband—here it’s Richard, a 36-year-old hedge fund manager with “a runner’s wiry build and an easy smile that belied his intense navy-blue eyes”—marries the same type of woman more than once, sometimes more than twice. Of course, he’s not who he seems. Perhaps the female characters are not, either. Here, we meet Nellie, an adorable New York preschool teacher who is not quite sure she wants to give up the fun, shoestring, highly social lifestyle she shares with her roomie to move to a sterile suburb with Richard. But the wedding date—of course he hasn’t even told her the location, just “buy a new bikini”—draws ever closer. Something bad happened to Nellie in Florida a long time ago that has made her anxious and hypervigilant. Meanwhile, Vanessa, the spurned wife, lives with her artist Aunt Charlotte (a great character), is boozing heavily, and is about to lose her job at Saks. She’s stalking Nellie, determined to prevent the marriage at all costs. Since you know there’s got to be more to it than this, the fun is in trying to figure it out before they tell you. We didn’t! One of the subplots, the one about the bad thing in Florida, was fresher than the main plot—maybe Hendricks and Pekkanen should have written a whole book about that.
Easy to read, smoothly put together. A good airport book.Pub Date: Jan. 9, 2018
ISBN: 978-1-250-13092-1
Page Count: 352
Publisher: St. Martin's
Review Posted Online: Sept. 27, 2017
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Oct. 15, 2017
Lame but, like its predecessors, bound for bestsellerdom.
A serial killer with a sense of history is the baddie in this latest from Baldacci, one of the reigning kings of potboilers (Split Second, 2003, etc.).
He kills, he leaves clues, he flatters through imitation: Son of Sam, the San Francisco Zodiac killer, Richard Ramirez, John Wayne Gracy, and so on down a sanguinary list of accredited members of the Monsters’ Hall of Fame. Suddenly, the landscape of poor little Wrightsburg, Virginia, is littered with corpses, and ex-Secret Service agents Sean King and Michelle Maxwell have their hands full. That’s because bewildered, beleaguered Chief of Police Todd Williams has turned to the newly minted private investigating firm of King and Maxwell for desperately needed (unofficial) help. Even these ratiocinative wizards, however, admit to puzzlement. “But I'm not getting this,” says Michelle. “Why commit murders in similar styles to past killers as a copycat would and then write letters making it clear you’re not them?” Excellent question, and it goes pretty much unanswered. Never mind—enter the battling Battles, a family with the requisite number of sins and secrets to qualify fully as hot southern Gothic and to prop up a plot in need. Bobby Battles, the patriarch, is bedridden, but Remmy, his wife, is one lively mischief-making steel magnolia. She’s brought breaking-and-entering charges against decent local handyman Junior Deaver, who as a result languishes in the county jail. Convinced of his innocence, Junior’s lawyer hires King & Maxwell to sniff around for exculpatory evidence. Well, will the two plot streams flow together? You betcha. Will the copycat-serial-killer at one point decide that King and Maxwell are just too clever to live? Inevitably. And when at last that CCSK’s identity is revealed and his crimes explained (talkily and tediously), will readers be satisfied? Only the charitable among them.
Lame but, like its predecessors, bound for bestsellerdom.Pub Date: Oct. 26, 2004
ISBN: 0-446-53108-1
Page Count: 440
Publisher: N/A
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 15, 2004
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