A good old-fashioned mystery novel with a lovable leading man at its heart.
In Allen’s debut mystery, the first of a planned series, a plucky young reporter takes matters into his own hands when his new crush goes missing.
Things look grim for Duncan Walsh, a young Northwestern University School of Journalism graduate. He was fired from his job at Chicago’s Channel 8 News for punching the lecherous (albeit Emmy-award winning) lead news anchor in the neck. As a result, Duncan struggles to get by on little money, living on “ramen noodles, five dollar foot longs, the occasional museum entrance fee, and admittedly, the occasional beer. One had to keep living.” Then he meets Agnes Nowakowski, a beguiling, sharp paleontology tour guide at the Chicago Museum of Natural History. Charmed by her brains and beauty, he takes her on a coffee date, undeterred by the fact that she’s seeing someone else. The unemployed Duncan fills his days with his pursuit of Agnes, hoping to win a second date. Eventually, the two connect by phone but don’t meet, as Agnes is slated to head off to a long archaeological dig in Montana. Duncan is shocked several days later when he sees Agnes’ face on the 10 o’clock news; apparently, she mysteriously disappeared before she even boarded her bus. Duncan is certain that he’ll be a suspect and decides to clear his own name by finding out what happened to Agnes himself. Allen’s page-turner chronicles Duncan’s investigation from start to finish, from his creation of his own online news outlet to get press passes to news conferences to his confrontation with Agnes’ boyfriend, James, about her disappearance. Ultimately, he follows a lead that ends up being far more dangerous than he ever imagined. Allen delivers a well-written mystery that’s equal parts funny and suspenseful. Although the book’s mystery is intriguing, what makes it truly successful is its lead character, Duncan, who’s a relatable, charmingly witty and admirably gutsy narrator. Readers will likely find him the perfect candidate to star in his own mystery series.
A good old-fashioned mystery novel with a lovable leading man at its heart.Pub Date: Dec. 13, 2013
ISBN: 978-1492334903
Page Count: 254
Publisher: CreateSpace
Review Posted Online: Feb. 24, 2014
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
BOOK REVIEW
A suspenseful, professional-grade north country procedural whose heroine, a deft mix of compassion and attitude, would be...
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 21, 2015
Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 15, 2015
Proficient but eminently predictable. Amid all the time shifts and embedded backstories, the most surprising feature is how...
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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