If this essentially conventional suspense plot—police procedural with government coverups—were set in Washington, it would add up to well-written, unremarkable entertainment. But Smith (Nightwing) places his thriller in Moscow; and though one isn't always fully convinced of his political authenticity or his characters' genuine Russian-ness, there's enough irreverent, uncliched local Soviet color here—more than in any recent US popular fiction—to lift the proceedings to a near-compelling level. Three bodies have been found under frozen snow in Moscow's congenial Gorky Park: the faces have been carved away, the fingertips removed, the teeth shattered; there are no clues to their identity except a foreign (US?) tooth filling, the ice-skates on the dead feet, and dust suggesting a connection to the forged-ikon black-market. So Chief Homicide Investigator Arkady Renko—a war hero's son and a bad Party member (his unfaithful wife is a good Party member)—zeroes in on Moscow's foreign visitors, on the black-market, on movie-company employee Irina (owner of one of the pairs of skates). And his hunches almost immediately fix on sleek US fur-importer John Osborne—hunches confirmed by the subsequent murder of a black-marketeer witness. But why would rich Osborne kill for some semi-valuable ikons? And though two of the victims seem to have been Siberian, what of the American victim—whose brother (a N.Y. cop who lavishes scorn on Arkady's methods) is sleuthing around on his own? And why is the KGB—or Arkady's boss—obstructing the investigation? (A KGB man steals the reconstructed head of one of the victims.) The answer is sable, Russia's choicest monopoly; but Arkady's shrewd detection merely lands him in KGB custody. And in the States-side finale (a Staten Island shootout) he and new-love Irina become pawns as Russia tries to get back its precious animals from wily thief Osborne. . . . An only-serviceable plot, rather too talkily slow-paced; and the Arkady/Irina romance is shrill (political) and unconvincing. But the textures are the point here—dour humor, the everydayness of paranoia, caviar in the steambath (for some), dirty snow and red tape—and they're richly specific enough to make this a special sort of suspense treat: bitter-cold and vodka-sharp.
Pub Date: April 1, 1981
ISBN: 0812977246
Page Count: 380
Publisher: N/A
Review Posted Online: Nov. 11, 2013
Kirkus Reviews Issue: April 1, 1981
IN THE NEWS
A middling mystery with telling historical details and the usual pleasures provided by the regulars’ interpersonal dynamics.
A plucky group of early-20th-century detectives (Murder on Trinity Place, 2019, etc.) takes on the Black Hand.
The leads include Frank Malloy and Gino Donatelli, former police officers who started a detective agency after an unexpected legacy made Malloy a wealthy man; Malloy’s wife, Sarah, the daughter of a wealthy society family who runs a maternity clinic for the poor; and their nanny, Maeve, a budding sleuth who works in Malloy’s office. All of them leap to attention when Gino’s sister-in-law Teodora reports that Jane Harding, a worker at the settlement house where Teo volunteers, has been kidnapped by the Black Hand, who are notorious for abducting the wives and children of anyone who can afford to pay ransom. The New York Police Department is corrupt, and the local Italian immigrants never report crimes. Mr. McWilliam, who runs the settlement house, had asked Jane to marry him, but she’d asked him to allow her to experience more of the single life before deciding. Seeking clues, Sarah visits Mrs. Cassidi, an earlier kidnapping victim who’s refused to talk to anyone, in hopes that her nursing experience and sympathetic manner will get results. Mrs. Cassidi admits to being raped but knows little about where she was held captive, a quiet place in a house where she could hear children. Soon after Nunzio Esposito, a leader of the Black Hand, tells Malloy that no one’s been taken from the settlement house, Jane suddenly reappears but refuses to discuss where she’s been. Lisa Prince, Jane’s well-to-do cousin, reluctantly agrees to take her in even though Jane’s jealous of her wealth and can be unpleasant to deal with. When Esposito’s found murdered in a flat he rented for his mistress, Gino, who’s just arrived on the scene, is arrested. Now the clever sleuths must solve both the murder and the abductions to clear Gino’s name.
A middling mystery with telling historical details and the usual pleasures provided by the regulars’ interpersonal dynamics.Pub Date: April 28, 2020
ISBN: 978-1-9848-0574-4
Page Count: 336
Publisher: Berkley Prime Crime
Review Posted Online: Feb. 9, 2020
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 1, 2020
No wonder Scarpetta asks, “When did my workplace become such a soap opera?” Answer: at least 10 years ago.
Happy birthday, Dr. Kay Scarpetta. But no Florida vacation for you and your husband, FBI profiler Benton Wesley—not because President Barack Obama is visiting Cambridge, but because a deranged sniper has come to town.
Shortly after everyone’s favorite forensic pathologist (Dust, 2013, etc.) receives a sinister email from a correspondent dubbed Copperhead, she goes outside to find seven pennies—all polished, all turned heads-up, all dated 1981—on her garden wall. Clearly there’s trouble afoot, though she’s not sure what form it will take until five minutes later, when a call from her old friend and former employee Pete Marino, now a detective with the Cambridge Police, summons her to the scene of a shooting. Jamal Nari was a high school music teacher who became a minor celebrity when his name was mistakenly placed on a terrorist watch list; he claimed government persecution, and he ended up having a beer with the president. Now he’s in the news for quite a different reason. Bizarrely, the first tweets announcing his death seem to have preceded it by 45 minutes. And Leo Gantz, a student at Nari’s school, has confessed to his murder, even though he couldn’t possibly have done it. But these complications are only the prelude to a banquet of homicide past and present, as Scarpetta and Marino realize when they link Nari’s murder to a series of killings in New Jersey. For a while, the peripheral presence of the president makes you wonder if this will be the case that finally takes the primary focus off the investigator’s private life. But most of the characters are members of Scarpetta’s entourage, the main conflicts involve infighting among the regulars, and the killer turns out to be a familiar nemesis Scarpetta thought she’d left for dead several installments back. As if.
Pub Date: Nov. 11, 2014
ISBN: 978-0-06-232534-1
Page Count: 400
Publisher: Morrow/HarperCollins
Review Posted Online: July 22, 2014
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 15, 2014
BOOK TO SCREEN
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