An excellent start to what might prove to be a rewarding new thriller series.
A brisk, drug-filled page-turner jets from the Pacific Northwest to various hot spots abroad, leaving a trail of bodies—and questions—in its wake.
Aficionados of suspense will savor Davis’ rich debut. Commencing, as most mystery tales do, with a corpse and a quest to discover how and why it got there—in this case, the nude body of an affluent, troubled young woman posed in an otherwise-immaculate, upscale cabin near Seattle—the bulk of the novel follows the investigation of a vast cocaine distribution network in the region. At the behest of Phil Monroe, deputy district attorney of King County, undercover agent Hunter poses as “Kaitlin Reynolds,” a marine biology student at the University of Washington, to infiltrate the network, which seems to include Monroe’s younger sister, Sadie (the corpse in the novel’s prologue). The petite, ruthless Hunter is joined by Graham McKenzie, a freelance agent with his own agenda and complex connections to various international intel organizations. Kaitlin and Graham delve into the murky depths of the drug ring, dredging up all kinds of info on Sadie, Phil and their bigwig father—the governor of Washington state—as well as Sadie’s gorgeous beau, Taylor Grant, part of the drug ring. Kaitlin’s delightfully ambiguous handler, Max, makes memorable appearances, as do heavies from both the international cartel and other players (the feds, MI6, the FBI and Interpol, etc.) who have a stake in the proceedings. Kaitlin’s slippery persona shifts with alarming ease as her own intriguing story unfolds in Dallas, London, Dublin and ultimately Tahiti. Early on, one character observes that secrets are always the breaking point of life; in this stylish, brutal tale, everyone has secrets, and many would kill to keep them hidden—including Hunter/Kaitlin—or whoever she really is. Though the novel’s setting and pervading air of corruption recall AMC’s TV miniseries The Killing, its pacing is quicker and its payoff much more satisfying.
An excellent start to what might prove to be a rewarding new thriller series.Pub Date: July 6, 2013
ISBN: 978-1482763522
Page Count: 236
Publisher: CreateSpace
Review Posted Online: Sept. 13, 2013
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Oct. 15, 2013
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
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
Irritatingly trite woman-in-periler from lawyer-turned-novelist Baldacci. Moving away from the White House and the white-shoe Washington law firms of his previous bestsellers (Absolute Power, 1996; Total Control, 1997), Baldacci comes up with LuAnn Tyler, a spunky, impossibly beautiful, white-trash truck stop waitress with a no-good husband and a terminally cute infant daughter in tow. Some months after the birth of Lisa, LuAnn gets a phone call summoning her to a make-shift office in an unrented storefront of the local shopping mall. There, she gets a Faustian offer from a Mr. Jackson, a monomaniacal, cross-dressing manipulator who apparently knows the winning numbers in the national lottery before the numbers are drawn. It seems that LuAnn fits the media profile of what a lottery winner should be—poor, undereducated but proud—and if she's willing to buy the right ticket at the right time and transfer most of her winnings to Jackson, she'll be able to retire in luxury. Jackson fails to inform her, however, that if she refuses his offer, he'll have her killed. Before that can happen, as luck would have it, LuAnn barely escapes death when one of husband Duane's drug deals goes bad. She hops on a first-class Amtrak sleeper to Manhattan with a hired executioner in pursuit. But executioner Charlie, one of Jackson's paid handlers, can't help but hear wedding bells when he sees LuAnn cooing with her daughter. Alas, a winning $100- million lottery drawing complicates things. Jackson spirits LuAnn and Lisa away to Sweden, with Charlie in pursuit. Never fear. Not only will LuAnn escape a series of increasingly violent predicaments, but she'll also outwit Jackson, pay an enormous tax bill to the IRS, and have enough left over to honeymoon in Switzerland. Too preposterous to work as feminine wish-fulfillment, too formulaic to be suspenseful. (Book-of-the-Month Club main selection)
Pub Date: Dec. 2, 1997
ISBN: 0-446-52259-7
Page Count: 528
Publisher: N/A
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Oct. 15, 1997
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