An invigorating thriller with an engaging protagonist surrounded by equally worthy characters.
Rainer’s third thriller featuring Jeff Trask (Horns of the Devil, 2013, etc.) pits the D.C. attorney against drug dealers.
When the daughter of U.S. Sen. Hugh Heidelberg, a Texas oil tycoon, dies of a heroin overdose, Sen. Sherwin Graves of Georgia requests that the case be assigned to Trask, a man he’s worked with before. Trask’s assignment: to find the people who supplied the girl with the drugs. The attorney’s team, which includes an FBI task force, uncovers similar deaths among prostitutes in the D.C. area, but the investigation soon stalls due to a lack of evidence. This changes when Trask attends a conference in Texas and meets fellow attendee Luis Aguilar, a major in the Mexican marines. Aguilar and his men, in the heart of the Mexican cartel wars, have been trying to put a stop to the Los Zetas gang, whose members have been massacring civilians and police alike. The major has an inside man providing intel, which Aguilar passes along to Trask. Authorities on both sides of the border must work together to stop further drug transportation and prevent further loss of life. This installment is less of a legal thriller than previous entries, as Trask spends most of the story in the field rather than in the courtroom, but it still focuses on strategy over action. Indeed, it describes its action scenes primarily after the fact, as when a character updates Aguilar on the cartel’s raids. Trask remains a perplexing, colorful figure; he speaks his mind and is unapologetic when things don’t go as planned. But even he can’t outshine the versatile supporting cast, which includes Frank Aurrichio, an enigmatic “stockbroker” on the Zetas’ payroll; Detective Tim Wisniewski and Officer Randi Rhodes, who pursue a budding romance; vice cop Gordon “Hammer” Hamilton; and Trask’s wife, Lynn, an FBI analyst. Trask does get his time in the legal limelight when a couple of baddies go to trial, but the investigation thrives mainly on the team’s collective effort.
An invigorating thriller with an engaging protagonist surrounded by equally worthy characters.Pub Date: March 18, 2014
ISBN: 978-1495322334
Page Count: 314
Publisher: CreateSpace
Review Posted Online: May 29, 2014
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
Greed, love, and extrasensory abilities combine in two middling mysteries.
Coulter’s treasured FBI agents take on two cases marked by danger and personal involvement.
Dillon Savitch and his wife, Lacey Sherlock, have special abilities that have served them well in law enforcement (Paradox, 2018, etc.). But that doesn't prevent Sherlock’s car from hitting a running man after having been struck by a speeding SUV that runs a red light. The runner, though clearly injured, continues on his way and disappears. Not so the SUV driver, a security engineer for the Bexholt Group, which has ties to government agencies. Sherlock’s own concussion causes memory loss so severe that she doesn’t recognize Savitch or remember their son, Sean. The whole incident seems more suspicious when a blood test from the splatter of the man Sherlock hit reveals that he’s Justice Cummings, an analyst for the CIA. The agency’s refusal to cooperate makes Savitch certain that Bexholt is involved in a deep-laid plot. Meanwhile, Special Agent Griffin Hammersmith is visiting friends who run a cafe in the touristy Virginia town of Gaffers Ridge. Hammersmith, who has psychic abilities, is taken aback when he hears in his mind a woman’s cry for help. Reporter Carson DeSilva, who came to the area to interview a Nobel Prize winner, also has psychic abilities, and she overhears the thoughts of Rafer Bodine, a young man who has apparently kidnapped and possibly murdered three teenage girls. Unluckily, she blurts out her thoughts, and she’s snatched and tied up in a cellar by Bodine. Bodine may be a killer, but he’s also the nephew of the sheriff and the son of the local bigwig. So the sheriff arrests Hammersmith and refuses to accept his FBI credentials. Bodine's mother has psychic powers strong enough to kill, but she meets her match in Hammersmith, DeSilva, Savitch, and Sherlock.
Greed, love, and extrasensory abilities combine in two middling mysteries.Pub Date: July 30, 2019
ISBN: 978-1-5011-9365-1
Page Count: 512
Publisher: Simon & Schuster
Review Posted Online: June 30, 2019
Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 15, 2019
Slaughter (Cop Town, 2014, etc.) is so uncompromising in following her blood trails to the darkest places imaginable that...
Twenty-four years after a traumatic disappearance tore a Georgia family apart, Slaughter’s scorching stand-alone picks them up and shreds them all over again.
The Carrolls have never been the same since 19-year-old Julia vanished. After years of fruitlessly pestering the police, her veterinarian father, Sam, killed himself; her librarian mother, Helen, still keeps the girl's bedroom untouched, just in case. Julia’s sisters have been equally scarred. Lydia Delgado has sold herself for drugs countless times, though she’s been clean for years now; Claire Scott has just been paroled after knee-capping her tennis partner for a thoughtless remark. The evening that Claire’s ankle bracelet comes off, her architect husband, Paul, is callously murdered before her eyes and, without a moment's letup, she stumbles on a mountainous cache of snuff porn. Paul’s business partner, Adam Quinn, demands information from Claire and threatens her with dire consequences if she doesn’t deliver. The Dunwoody police prove as ineffectual as ever. FBI agent Fred Nolan is more suavely menacing than helpful. So Lydia and Claire, who’ve grown so far apart that they’re virtual strangers, are unwillingly thrown back on each other for help. Once she’s plunged you into this maelstrom, Slaughter shreds your own nerves along with those of the sisters, not simply by a parade of gruesome revelations—though she supplies them in abundance—but by peeling back layer after layer from beloved family members Claire and Lydia thought they knew. The results are harrowing.
Slaughter (Cop Town, 2014, etc.) is so uncompromising in following her blood trails to the darkest places imaginable that she makes most of her high-wire competition look pallid, formulaic, or just plain fake.Pub Date: Sept. 29, 2015
ISBN: 978-0-06-242905-6
Page Count: 400
Publisher: Morrow/HarperCollins
Review Posted Online: June 30, 2015
Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 15, 2015
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