by Marc Savage ‧ RELEASE DATE: June 1, 1993
Wise guy as usual, author Savage continues the crime doings of the Scorceses (Flamingos, 1991, etc.)—New York mobsters who are a cross between Jimmy Breslin's and Anthony Bruno's thugs. Here, Misty Carmichael is a small-potatoes gambler and full- time wastrel. But after a sudden inspiration, he decides to heist a quarter of a million from the Scorceses. After all, he might never hit it big at the track, and here is a sure thing. So Misty steals the mafia's money and scurries for parts unknown in his 11- year-old rusted yellow Toyota. Blitz Focoso, whom Misty robs, going all out to recover, hires a couple of ace skiptracers, brothers Izzy and Abe Stein. Coincidentally, Izzy, unbeknownst, is Misty's mom's ex-lover. Also soon hot on the trail of the thief is syndicate capo Joe Scorcese's prodigal son, Angelo: banished to Phoenix because he tried to off his old man and take over at his Vietnamese wife's urging, Angelo wants Misty bad so as to regain his pa's good graces. (``That little spud sucker comes through here, the surgeon's gonna be a busy boy,'' says Angelo, talking in Dutch Leonardese, as do most of the characters, even the women.) En route to Hawaii, Misty picks up little cowboy-hatted-and-booted Leslie Ann Rice in Durango. Would she like to go with him? She would, of course, but the first chance she gets she calls her daddy Earl in Nevada and tells him to get on a plane to Oahu: ``I think our ship's come in.'' What transpires when all interested parties come together in ``paradise'' turns this comic crime novel into a modern-day Greek tragedy. And the juxtaposition of this incongruous resolution plus the tough-guy dialogue every character parrots is off-putting.
Pub Date: June 1, 1993
ISBN: 0-385-46779-6
Page Count: 368
Publisher: Doubleday
Review Posted Online: June 24, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: April 1, 1993
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by Marc Savage
by J.A. Jance ‧ RELEASE DATE: April 2, 2019
Proficient but eminently predictable. Amid all the time shifts and embedded backstories, the most surprising feature is how...
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A convicted killer’s list of five people he wants dead runs the gamut from the wife he’s already had murdered to franchise heroine Ali Reynolds.
Back in the day, women came from all over to consult Santa Clarita fertility specialist Dr. Edward Gilchrist. Many of them left his care happily pregnant, never dreaming that the father of the babies they carried was none other than the physician himself, who donated his own sperm rather than that of the handsome, athletic, disease-free men pictured in his scrapbook. When Alexandra Munsey’s son, Evan, is laid low by the kidney disease he’s inherited from his biological father and she returns to Gilchrist in search of the donor’s medical records, the roof begins to fall in on him. By the time it’s done falling, he’s serving a life sentence in Folsom Prison for commissioning the death of his wife, Dawn, the former nurse and sometime egg donor who’d turned on him. With nothing left to lose, Gilchrist tattoos himself with the initials of five people he blames for his fall: Dawn; Leo Manuel Aurelio, the hit man he’d hired to dispose of her; Kaitlyn Todd, the nurse/receptionist who took Dawn’s place; Alex Munsey, whose search for records upset his apple cart; and Ali Reynolds, the TV reporter who’d helped put Alex in touch with the dozen other women who formed the Progeny Project because their children looked just like hers. No matter that Ali’s been out of both California and the news business for years; Gilchrist and his enablers know that revenge can’t possibly be served too cold. Wonder how far down that list they’ll get before Ali, aided once more by Frigg, the methodical but loose-cannon AI first introduced in Duel to the Death (2018), turns on them?
Proficient but eminently predictable. Amid all the time shifts and embedded backstories, the most surprising feature is how little the boundary-challenged AI, who gets into the case more or less inadvertently, differs from your standard human sidekick with issues.Pub Date: April 2, 2019
ISBN: 978-1-5011-5101-9
Page Count: 352
Publisher: Gallery Books/Simon & Schuster
Review Posted Online: Feb. 18, 2019
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 1, 2019
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by J.A. Jance
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by J.A. Jance
by Lorna Barrett ‧ RELEASE DATE: Aug. 13, 2019
An anodyne visit with Tricia and her friends and enemies hung on a thin mystery.
Too much free time leads a New Hampshire bookseller into yet another case of murder.
Now that Tricia Miles has Pixie Poe and Mr. Everett practically running her bookstore, Haven’t Got a Clue, she finds herself at loose ends. Her wealthy sister, Angelica, who in the guise of Nigela Ricita has invested heavily in making Stoneham a bookish tourist attraction, is entering the amateur competition for the Great Booktown Bake-Off. So Tricia, who’s recently taken up baking as a hobby, decides to join her and spends a lot of time looking for the perfect cupcake recipe. A visit to another bookstore leaves Tricia witnessing a nasty argument between owner Joyce Widman and next-door neighbor Vera Olson over the trimming of tree branches that hang over Joyce’s yard—also overheard by new town police officer Cindy Pearson. After Tricia accepts Joyce’s offer of some produce from her garden, they find Vera skewered by a pitchfork, and when Police Chief Grant Baker arrives, Joyce is his obvious suspect. Ever since Tricia moved to Stoneham, the homicide rate has skyrocketed (Poisoned Pages, 2018, etc.), and her history with Baker is fraught. She’s also become suspicious about the activities at Pets-A-Plenty, the animal shelter where Vera was a dedicated volunteer. Tricia’s offered her expertise to the board, but president Toby Kingston has been less than welcoming. With nothing but baking on her calendar, Tricia has plenty of time to investigate both the murder and her vague suspicions about the shelter. Plenty of small-town friendships and rivalries emerge in her quest for the truth.
An anodyne visit with Tricia and her friends and enemies hung on a thin mystery.Pub Date: Aug. 13, 2019
ISBN: 978-1-9848-0272-9
Page Count: 320
Publisher: Berkley
Review Posted Online: May 26, 2019
Kirkus Reviews Issue: June 15, 2019
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