A fine combination of detective work and religious bickering presented with wit and style.
An orphaned girl is caught in a clash of religious cultures.
Martha Rose is an observant Jewish woman with a close circle of friends, a passion for quilting, and a surprising amount of experience with detective work through her fiance, Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives agent Yossi Levy, and her son-in-law, LAPD detective Noah Kaplan (Knot My Sister’s Keeper, 2018, etc.). When Marigold Poppy Sarah Halaby comes to her door to inform her that Martha’s neighbor Sonia Spiegelman, Poppy’s new foster mother, won’t wake up, her visit launches Martha on a complicated and dangerous mission. Sonia recovers from her diabetic coma, but because Poppy’s social worker fears she may be unable to care for Poppy, Martha steps in to help. She learns that Poppy’s parents, Rachel and Ali Halaby, were murdered, with Poppy a possible witness. Both Rachel’s Orthodox Jewish family and Ali’s Muslim family disowned the couple and refused to take in Poppy when they were killed. Her parents had agreed to raise the precocious Poppy as Jewish but teach her about her Muslim heritage. Martha’s wealthy half sister, Giselle, offers to pay for a bodyguard for Poppy, but when they learn that Poppy’s father was an undercover agent for the FBI and his killer may plan to return, Yossi gets ATF agent Hector Fuentes to take the job. Determined to find family members who’ll accept Poppy, Martha tracks down the Katzenozen family and discovers that Rachel’s sister, Leah, lives in New York. Leah, who’s been trying to get her stubborn grandfather to let her adopt Poppy, agrees to meet them secretly but backs off once Martha reveals the danger she’s in. Martha approaches the Halabys through the family lawyer, but Marwan Halaby stubbornly resists even though her grandmother is anxious to meet Poppy. Fed up with the self-righteous families mired in distrust, Martha knows she must find the killer if she ever wants to see Poppy settled in a loving home.
A fine combination of detective work and religious bickering presented with wit and style.Pub Date: July 30, 2019
ISBN: 978-1-4967-2050-4
Page Count: 304
Publisher: Kensington
Review Posted Online: May 12, 2019
Kirkus Reviews Issue: June 1, 2019
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
Forget about solving all these crimes; the signal triumph here is (spoiler) the heroine’s survival.
Another sweltering month in Charlotte, another boatload of mysteries past and present for overworked, overstressed forensic anthropologist Temperance Brennan.
A week after the night she chases but fails to catch a mysterious trespasser outside her town house, some unknown party texts Tempe four images of a corpse that looks as if it’s been chewed by wild hogs, because it has been. Showboat Medical Examiner Margot Heavner makes it clear that, breaking with her department’s earlier practice (The Bone Collection, 2016, etc.), she has no intention of calling in Tempe as a consultant and promptly identifies the faceless body herself as that of a young Asian man. Nettled by several errors in Heavner’s analysis, and even more by her willingness to share the gory details at a press conference, Tempe launches her own investigation, which is not so much off the books as against the books. Heavner isn’t exactly mollified when Tempe, aided by retired police detective Skinny Slidell and a host of experts, puts a name to the dead man. But the hints of other crimes Tempe’s identification uncovers, particularly crimes against children, spur her on to redouble her efforts despite the new M.E.’s splenetic outbursts. Before he died, it seems, Felix Vodyanov was linked to a passenger ferry that sank in 1994, an even earlier U.S. government project to research biological agents that could control human behavior, the hinky spiritual retreat Sparkling Waters, the dark web site DeepUnder, and the disappearances of at least four schoolchildren, two of whom have also turned up dead. And why on earth was Vodyanov carrying Tempe’s own contact information? The mounting evidence of ever more and ever worse skulduggery will pull Tempe deeper and deeper down what even she sees as a rabbit hole before she confronts a ringleader implicated in “Drugs. Fraud. Breaking and entering. Arson. Kidnapping. How does attempted murder sound?”
Forget about solving all these crimes; the signal triumph here is (spoiler) the heroine’s survival.Pub Date: March 17, 2020
ISBN: 978-1-9821-3888-2
Page Count: 352
Publisher: Scribner
Review Posted Online: Dec. 22, 2019
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 15, 2020
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
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