An engaging murder tale set in the dog-eat-dog world of New Orleans.
In this debut crime novel, an ex-cop must solve a murder for which he is the prime suspect.
In the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina, Cleveland “Mr. J” Jones—ex-military, ex-cop, and ex-con—opened the Algiers Mission, a homeless shelter for the needy of New Orleans. The shelter helps keep his mind off the grief he feels for the wife and children he lost during the storm. Now, four years after founding Algiers, Mr. J—who has always been flexible with the rules when it comes to his sense of justice—finds himself in debt, unable to pay the mortgage on the mission or his house. A tragedy of an even more urgent sort strikes when the criminal sons of Margaret Green, one of Mr. J’s closest friends, are murdered: one in a drug dealer’s apartment and the other in a prison bathroom. Margaret makes Mr. J promise her that he will help find those responsible for the crimes. After all, their ill-gotten money was a primary source of the donations that have kept the mission running. For information, Mr. J turns to his longtime friend Chill, a dope fiend with his ear to the often deadly New Orleans streets. As more drug dealers turn up dead, it becomes clear that something big is afoot. Things get turned on their head when Mr. J learns that he is the police’s primary suspect. “The way I see it,” a detective tells him, “you would make the perfect vigilante. If I’m not mistaken a vigilante is an unauthorized person who assumes law enforcement powers. That sounds like an ex-cop private eye wanna-be to me.” Now Mr. J must deal with more than his own financial problems: He has to solve a murder case in order to clear his name. To do so, he’ll have to heed the words written on a note found in one of the dead men’s mouths: “Loose lips sink ships."
Guinness’ prose is sharp and conversational, painting a portrait of life on the New Orleans streets that is equal parts grit and humor. “Death and prison had become a retirement plan for many of the black men that I grew up with,” reflects Mr. J. “Jail was the poor man’s retirement. It was an urban 401K plan that guaranteed high losses of life and freedom to all investors.” The story is less a mystery than it is a tale of intersecting lives in New Orleans’ closely knit community of criminals and their associates. Readers discover early in the novel just who is behind the deaths of Margaret’s sons and the reasons for the killings. The narrative is more interested in tracking how the various characters react to new developments when things don’t go quite as planned. Mr. J is a complex protagonist with some unflattering traits—he has a tendency to leer at and fantasize about women who are significantly younger than he is—but he and the rest of the characters possess a scummy authenticity that helps to sell the story. There are moments when the plot drags, but overall the reading experience is an entertaining one.
An engaging murder tale set in the dog-eat-dog world of New Orleans.Pub Date: Sept. 12, 2020
ISBN: 978-1-09-831842-0
Page Count: 378
Publisher: BookBaby
Review Posted Online: Sept. 17, 2020
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Nov. 15, 2020
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
Fast-moving excitement with a satisfying finish.
The feds must protect an accused criminal and an orphaned girl.
Maybe you’ve met him before as protagonist of The 6:20 Man (2022): Ex-Army Ranger Travis Devine, who’d had the dubious fortune to tangle with “the girl on the train,” is now assigned by his homeland security boss to protect Danny Glass, who's awaiting trial on multiple RICO charges in Washington state. Devine has what it takes: He “was a closer, snooper, fixer, investigator,” and, when necessary, a killer. These skills are on full display as the deaths of three key witnesses grind justice to a temporary halt. Glass has a 12-year-old niece, Betsy Odom, and each is the other’s only living relative—her parents recently died of an apparent drug overdose. The FBI has temporary guardianship of Betsy, who's a handful. She tells Travis that though she’s not yet 13, she's 28 in “life-shit years.” The financially well-heeled Glass wants to be her legal guardian with an eye to eventual adoption, but what are his real motives? And what happens to her if he's convicted? Meanwhile, Betsy insists that her parents never touched drugs, and she begs Travis to find out how they really died. This becomes part of a mission that oozes danger. The small town of Ricketts has a woman mayor who’s full of charm on the surface, but deeply corrupt and deadly when crossed. She may be linked to a subversive group called "12/24/65," as in 1865, when the Ku Klux Klan beast was born. Blood flows, bombs explode, and people perish, both good guys and not-so-good guys. Readers might ponder why in fiction as well as in life, it sometimes seems necessary for many to die so one may live. And what about the girl on the train? She's not necessary to the plot, but she's a fun addition as she pops in and out of the pages, occasionally leaving notes for Travis. Maybe she still wants him dead.
Fast-moving excitement with a satisfying finish.Pub Date: Nov. 12, 2024
ISBN: 9781538757901
Page Count: 432
Publisher: Grand Central Publishing
Review Posted Online: Sept. 14, 2024
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Oct. 15, 2024
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