A grim thriller with an insider’s view of a deadly epidemic.
Moonlighting for the fourth time, prosecuting attorney Lindquist (Never Mind Nirvana, 2000, etc.) focuses on the methamphetamine trade in his Washington State hometown.
Detective Wyatt James is a driven man. Despite a law degree and a gorgeous girlfriend who shares his interest in classic films, he’d rather work. Specifically, he wants to bring down a meth dealer who has adopted the pseudonym Howard Schultz in honor of another Pacific Northwest entrepreneur, the founder of Starbucks. Wyatt’s beat, Tacoma and environs, leads the country in the homemade drug’s manufacture and abuse; he’s sick of seeing the addicts ruin their lives, not to mention those of their abused children. But Howard, even when addled by his own concoctions, proves a resourceful enemy, almost living up to his drug-fueled delusions as he manages to outwit Wyatt. A series of needy users, including two addicted young mothers, provide shelter and space to manufacture more of the drugs, and proximity to Canada almost helps Howard outwit laws restricting the sale of pseudoephedrine, the cold medicine containing meth’s primary ingredients. County prosecutor Mike Lawson, a quiet force for law and order who reads about Zen Buddhism and seeks inner peace, provides the third voice in this contemporary crime thriller. The narrative takes turns among their points of view as Wyatt hunts Howard, whose twin goals are to evade arrest and to keep producing the highly addictive white powder. Lindquist doesn’t glamorize drug life: Howard and his colleagues are described as the living dead, with teeth like “dying brown and grey pegs poking out from swollen gums.” But evocative details, such as the steps necessary to create meth from a mix of cold medicine and automotive supplies, enmesh us in Howard’s mad world right up to the inevitable, satisfying conclusion.
A grim thriller with an insider’s view of a deadly epidemic.Pub Date: May 15, 2007
ISBN: 978-1-4165-3577-5
Page Count: 256
Publisher: Simon & Schuster
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: April 1, 2007
BOOK REVIEW
All these problems are handsomely solved at the unsurprising cost of making the human characters less interesting than the...
Just when you thought you’d seen a detective in every guise imaginable, here comes one in sheep’s clothing.
For years, George Glenn hasn’t been close to anyone but his sheep. Everyday he lets them out, pastures them, reads to them and brings them safely back home to his barn in the guilelessly named Irish village of Glennkill. Now George lies dead, pinned to the ground by a spade. Although his flock haven’t had much experience with this sort of thing, they’re determined to bring his killer to justice. There are of course several obstacles, and debut novelist Swann deals with them in appealingly matter-of-fact terms. Sheep can’t talk to people; they can only listen in on conversations between George’s widow Kate and Bible-basher Beth Jameson. Not even the smartest of them, Othello, Miss Maple (!) and Mopple the Whale, can understand much of what the neighborhood priest is talking about, except that his name is evidently God. They’re afraid to confront suspects like butcher Abraham Rackham and Gabriel O’Rourke, the Gaelic-speaking charmer who’s raising a flock for slaughter. And even after a series of providential discoveries and brainwaves reveals the answer to the riddle, they don’t know how to tell the Glennkill citizenry.
All these problems are handsomely solved at the unsurprising cost of making the human characters less interesting than the sheep. But the sustained tone of straight-faced wonderment is magical.Pub Date: June 5, 2007
ISBN: 978-0-385-52111-6
Page Count: 368
Publisher: Flying Dolphin/Doubleday
Review Posted Online: June 24, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: April 15, 2007
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
A murder is committed in a stalled transcontinental train in the Balkans, and every passenger has a watertight alibi. But Hercule Poirot finds a way.
**Note: This classic Agatha Christie mystery was originally published in England as Murder on the Orient Express, but in the United States as Murder in the Calais Coach. Kirkus reviewed the book in 1934 under the original US title, but we changed the title in our database to the now recognizable title Murder on the Orient Express. This is the only name now known for the book. The reason the US publisher, Dodd Mead, did not use the UK title in 1934 was to avoid confusion with the 1932 Graham Greene novel, Orient Express.
Pub Date: Feb. 28, 1934
ISBN: 978-0062073495
Page Count: -
Publisher: Dodd, Mead
Review Posted Online: Sept. 20, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 1, 1934
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