Even the most ravenous appetites for more gruesome revelations about the Bosnian nightmare will be sated. Despite the weight...
A particularly horrific crime kicks off the fifth case for Detective Chief Superintendent Konrad Simonsen and the Homicide Department of the Copenhagen PD.
A shadowy man jumps from a canal bridge to a tour boat passing below, conceals himself until the time is right, then emerges from his hiding place, armed with a combat knife, and quickly kills the captain, the tour guide, and two passengers before the only other adult aboard leaps into the water even though she can’t swim. Left alone on the boat with the 16 Asian children on the tour, he strips to his bathing suit and swims away. Nor is the carnage over, for the unpiloted boat, crossing the path of another vessel unable to avoid hitting it, is cut in half, drowning most of the children. The crime would be monstrous under any circumstances, but when Simonsen’s wife and colleague, Nathalie von Rosen, aka the Countess, realizes that one of the dead is Sgt. Pauline Berg, it takes on a fiercely personal intensity. Was Pauline the killer’s primary target? Why did he choose to attack her in such a public way? What to make of the old cases to which the outrage is clearly linked when there’s every indication that telltale details of those cases were hedged, obscured, or concealed? In good time the homicide squad connects the attack to Bosnian War veteran Bjørn Lauritzen and versatile judge advocate/intelligence officer Irene Gallagher. But the resulting courtroom proceedings backfire spectacularly, with disastrous results for Simonsen (The Lake, 2017, etc.) and especially Deputy Homicide Chief Arne Pedersen, his right-hand man. A trip to Bosnia stirs up evidence of even more crimes; the corruption is so thick and pervasive, with so many heavy hitters arrayed against Homicide, that it’s something of a miracle when the case is finally closed.
Even the most ravenous appetites for more gruesome revelations about the Bosnian nightmare will be sated. Despite the weight of all this historical detail, the most powerful sequences are the very first and the very last, showing the slaughter on the canal and the final apprehension of the culprit.Pub Date: July 3, 2018
ISBN: 978-1-63557-162-2
Page Count: 352
Publisher: Bloomsbury
Review Posted Online: May 14, 2018
Kirkus Reviews Issue: June 1, 2018
Fluke lavishes so much attention on the mechanics of location shooting that there’s scant time for the murder, much less its...
Even the murder of its cranky director can’t stop the filming of Crisis in Cherrywood or halt the snooping of Lake Eden’s premier baker.
Just when Hannah Swenson’s decided to accept neither of the marriage proposals tendered at the end of Peach Cobbler Murder (2005)—turning down both sweet-tempered dentist Norman Rhoades and hot-blooded lawman Mike Kingston—another suitor turns up. Her old college classmate Ross Barton, now a Hollywood producer who thinks Lake Eden is just the spot to shoot his new movie, recruits Hannah’s mom Delores as set designer, her younger sister Michelle as production assistant and her middle sister Andrea as an extra. He even casts Andrea’s five-year-old, Tracey, to play heroine Lynne Larchmont as a child and presses Hannah’s cat Moishe into service as her childhood pet. For Hannah he reserves the role of constant companion, escorting her to dinner, inviting her to view the dailies and letting her watch the filming—which gives her a front-row seat as Dean Lawrence, instructing leading man Anson Burke on how to use a prop pistol, shoots himself fatally instead. Since Mike has made it clear to Hannah that she must leave investigating to the professionals, she can’t investigate, she can only snoop—much to the delight of Andrea, Norman and Lake Edenites everywhere.
Fluke lavishes so much attention on the mechanics of location shooting that there’s scant time for the murder, much less its solution.Pub Date: March 1, 2006
ISBN: 0-7582-0294-6
Page Count: 356
Publisher: Kensington
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 15, 2006
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
Familiar thrills lashed to a razor’s edge.
A Spanish cop, incurring a crime lord’s vengeful and wholly unearned wrath, is saddled with a new partner she’s not crazy about herself.
Agreeing to take a late-night call to cover for a colleague who wants to go home to his wife and baby, Officer Cristina Sánchez Pradell, of Marviña’s Policía Local, finds herself face to face with a man she takes to be an armed intruder. Before he can identify himself as Ian Templeton, who broke into his own house after he forgot his keys, he’s startled by a dark figure behind him and fires three shots, killing Angela Fry, the pregnant girlfriend who’d returned with him. Templeton, who’s actually Jack Cleland, a British fugitive widely sought for drug trafficking and killing a cop, blames Cristina’s presence for Angela’s death and swears revenge against her whole family. That includes her husband, Antonio; their 10-year-old son, Lucas; her cancer-stricken sister, Nuri; Nuri’s husband, fellow police officer Paco; and Ana, Cristina’s deaf, blind aunt, whose role will be pivotal. Cleland’s threats ring hollow as long as he’s in custody, but on the journey to transfer him to the custody of John Mackenzie, a disgraced ex-cop on his first day as an investigator for Britain's National Crime Agency, Cleland’s underlings break him out, killing one cop and shooting Paco nonfatally so that he can relay the news to Cristina. Mackenzie, a Scot who has long-standing issues with authority figures of all kinds, is ready to take the next flight home, but Sub-Inspector Miguel López, the chief of Marviña Station, insists that he stay and help Cristina, who clearly needs all the help she can get, however antipathetic its source. As the unwilling partners track down leads to Cleland’s present whereabouts, Cleland, effortlessly outmaneuvering them, zeroes in on one soft target after another. May (I’ll Keep You Safe, 2018, etc.) keeps a few surprises in reserve but not enough to prevent you from thinking you’ve seen this all before.
Familiar thrills lashed to a razor’s edge.Pub Date: March 31, 2020
ISBN: 978-1-78429-498-4
Page Count: 432
Publisher: Mobius
Review Posted Online: Feb. 8, 2020
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 1, 2020
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