Not quite Dick Francis, though this horsy English debut clears its fences neatly.
Discredited—in effect blacklisted—after a costly, headline-grabbing spill (not his fault), American show-jumping rider Ross Wakelin goes on an all-out bender. Just one, but he’s uncomfortably aware that it could have been prelude to a destructive series if not for the timely intervention of loyal Lindsay Cresswell. She’s just a friend, Ross keeps telling himself, since it’s understood between the two that her heart is irrevocably committed elsewhere. Romance aside, however, Lindsay represents redemption, presenting Ross with an unexpected and most welcome job offer, one that takes him to England and the chance at a longed-for fresh start. Lindsay’s uncle, Colonel John Preston, owns Oakley Manor in Wiltshire, a small show-jumping yard suddenly in the market for an experienced rider. Despite initial misgivings, the colonel allows himself to be persuaded by his niece’s special pleading, and Ross is hired. He likes the colonel and loves the horses, but there are minuses that become oppressively apparent. To begin with, there’s Leo Jackson, the sullen, snarly groom whose disenchantment with Ross is as instant as it is inexplicable. Even more unsettling is the feeling Ross can’t shake that Leo is merely the vanguard of other baleful forces aimed at Oakley Manor. And he’s right. Blackmail, character assassination, threats, treachery, and attempted murder soon serve to darken his life, as if the competitiveness, the physical and emotional wear and tear, the unavoidable ups and downs of professional show-jumping weren’t tribulation enough. Still, to balance the evil that’s inherent in the loathsome Leo, there’s lovely Lindsay, whose irrevocable commitment, it turns out, may have been overstated.
First-novel shakiness is plainly evident, but a sustaining amiability pervades all, and the horse stuff is wonderful.Pub Date: Feb. 1, 2003
ISBN: 0-09-179380-7
Page Count: 422
Publisher: Hutchinson/Trafalgar
Review Posted Online: May 20, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Nov. 15, 2002
Categories: GENERAL MYSTERY & DETECTIVE | MYSTERY & DETECTIVE
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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. 23, 2019
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 15, 2020
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Box takes another break from his highly successful Joe Pickett series (Stone Cold, 2014, etc.) for a stand-alone about a police detective, a developmentally delayed boy, and a package everyone in North Dakota wants to grab.
Cassandra Dewell can’t leave Montana’s Lewis and Clark County fast enough for her new job as chief investigator for Jon Kirkbride, sheriff of Bakken County. She leaves behind no memories worth keeping: her husband is dead, her boss has made no bones about disliking her, and she’s looking forward to new responsibilities and the higher salary underwritten by North Dakota’s sudden oil boom. But Bakken County has its own issues. For one thing, it’s cold—a whole lot colder than the coldest weather Cassie’s ever imagined. For another, the job she turns out to have been hired for—leading an investigation her new boss doesn’t feel he can entrust to his own force—makes her queasy. The biggest problem, though, is one she doesn’t know about until it slaps her in the face. A fatal car accident that was anything but accidental has jarred loose a stash of methamphetamines and cash that’s become the center of a battle between the Sons of Freedom, Bakken County’s traditional drug sellers, and MS-13, the Salvadorian upstarts who are muscling in on their territory. It’s a setup that leaves scant room for law enforcement officers or for Kyle Westergaard, the 12-year-old paperboy damaged since birth by fetal alcohol syndrome, who’s walked away from the wreck with a prize all too many people would kill for.
A suspenseful, professional-grade north country procedural whose heroine, a deft mix of compassion and attitude, would be welcome to return and tie up the gaping loose end Box leaves. The unrelenting cold makes this the perfect beach read.Pub Date: July 28, 2015
ISBN: 978-0-312-58321-7
Page Count: 272
Publisher: Minotaur
Review Posted Online: April 22, 2015
Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 15, 2015
Categories: GENERAL MYSTERY & DETECTIVE | MYSTERY & DETECTIVE
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