The Hammers, who put the procedure in procedural, keep the pot simmering at such a low temperature you’ll wonder if they’ve...
The fourth of the Hammer siblings’ accounts of Danish skulduggery follows a human trafficking ring to its untidy but logical end.
Identifying the skeletal remains of a young woman killed six months ago, her body dumped in a lake in Hanehoved Forest, is obviously going to be quite a challenge for Detective Superintendent Konrad "Simon" Simonsen (The Vanished, 2016, etc.) and his colleagues in the Copenhagen Homicide Department. It will take months before their painstaking, brick-by-brick investigation reveals what the reader has known all along: the dead woman, an uncooperative Nigerian teenager who’d been smuggled into Denmark and forced into prostitution, was accidentally killed in the middle of a punishment administered by Henrik Krag, a newcomer to this kind of work, while his more experienced partner, Jan Podowski, and Benedikte Lerche-Larsen, the boss’s daughter, looked on. Simon and his crew deferentially interview Adam Blixen-Agerskjold, the chamberlain and gentleman farmer who owns the forest, and his lady, Lenette, before they develop a more serious interest in estate bailiff Frode Otto, whose four-year-old conviction for assault makes him a much more likely prospect. And indeed Otto, questioned by the police, smilingly confesses to three additional rapes on which the statute of limitations has run out. While Simon and company are running down unpromising leads, the tale keeps turning to Benedikte’s hate/hate relationship with her father, poker and prostitution king Svend Lerche, and his helpmeet, Karina Larsen—who want to keep their daughter on a short leash even as they groom her to take over the family business—and her unlikely romance with Henrik Krag, which promises to be equally dysfunctional.
The Hammers, who put the procedure in procedural, keep the pot simmering at such a low temperature you’ll wonder if they’ve mistaken the fridge for the stovetop. The stubborn lack of momentum makes this one a natural for travelers on endless flights.Pub Date: July 4, 2017
ISBN: 978-1-63286-749-0
Page Count: 384
Publisher: Bloomsbury
Review Posted Online: May 1, 2017
Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 15, 2017
It’s hard to think of any writer since Flannery O’Connor, referenced at several key moments here, who’s succeeded as...
Slaughter’s latest break from the punishing travails of Dr. Sara Linton and Will Trent (The Kept Woman, 2016, etc.) uses a school shooting to reunite two sisters who’ve had compelling reasons for avoiding each other in the years since their own childhood horrors.
Twenty-eight years ago, two masked men broke into attorney Rusty Quinn’s Georgia home looking for the man of the house, the kind of lawyer who gives lawyers a bad name. In Rusty’s absence, things went south instantly, leaving Gamma Quinn dead, her daughter Samantha shot in the head and buried alive, and her daughter Charlotte fleeing in terror. Sam somehow survived and rose above her brain damage to become a successful New York patent attorney; Charlie remained in Pikeville, joined the criminal defense bar, and married ADA Ben Bernard. But she and Ben have separated; she’s taken solace in some quick sex with a stranger in a parking lot; and when she goes to the middle school where her one-night stand works as a history teacher to pick up the cellphone she left behind, she walks into the middle of a shooting that brings back all her own trauma. Goth girl Kelly Wilson admits she shot and killed Douglas Pinkman, the school principal, and 8-year-old Lucy Alexander, but Rusty, whose inbox is already overflowing with hate mail provoked by all the lowlifes he’s defended, is determined to serve as her attorney, with Sam as a most unlikely second chair. In addition to the multilayered conflicts among the Quinns and everyone else in town, Sam, who urged her sister to flee their childhood nightmare, and Charlie, who’s had to live with fleeing ever since, will have to deal with memories that make it hard for them to sit in the same room.
It’s hard to think of any writer since Flannery O’Connor, referenced at several key moments here, who’s succeeded as consistently as Slaughter at using horrific violence to evoke pity and terror. Whether she’s extending her franchise or creating stand-alones like this, she really does make your hair stand on end.Pub Date: Aug. 8, 2017
ISBN: 978-0-06-243024-3
Page Count: 512
Publisher: Morrow/HarperCollins
Review Posted Online: July 16, 2017
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 1, 2017
BOOK TO SCREEN
BOOK TO SCREEN
Some of the twists are more convincing than the last one, which leaves a few loose ends. But it’s great to see Cole (The...
The shooting of an apparent serial killer allows the LAPD to close the books on seven murders—but private eye Elvis Cole won’t have it.
Dead suspects don’t look any more guilty than Lionel Byrd. In his hand is the gun that fired the fatal shot into his head; at his feet is an album with Polaroids of seven women who’ve been killed at the rate of one a year, each photo snapped moments after the subject’s death. Homicide detective Connie Bastilla is only too happy to write finis to a troublesome case. But Cole, who produced the evidence that allowed Byrd’s lawyer to verify an alibi for the fifth murder, isn’t convinced. And he comes up with enough evidence to convince the seventh victim’s brothers to quit beating him up and help him investigate further. The harder Elvis digs, the more Byrd’s suicide looks like a murder whose evidence the cops are deliberately sweeping under the rug. But how far does the cover-up extend, and how high up are its beneficiaries? With some help from Detective Carol Starkey, late of the bomb squad, and his partner Joe Pike, whom nobody’s ever accused of being too sensitive, Cole follows the trail through a string of well-placed twists to a satisfying climax.
Some of the twists are more convincing than the last one, which leaves a few loose ends. But it’s great to see Cole (The Forgotten Man, 2005, etc.) back in action.Pub Date: July 1, 2008
ISBN: 978-0-7432-8164-5
Page Count: 288
Publisher: Simon & Schuster
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: June 1, 2008
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