Thoroughly workmanlike, if not terribly original or surprising.
A veteran Colorado cop faces the glass ceiling and a series of roadblocks in her first recorded case.
No woman in the Echo Valley Police Department has ever been promoted past the rank of detective—certainly not Jo Wyatt, who’s just been passed over for promotion to sergeant in favor of Cameron Finch, a considerably less experienced officer who also happens to be the husband from whom she’s quietly estranged. When Quinn Kirkwood finds college classmate Tye Horton, who has diabetes, shot to death in his garage apartment, Jo can’t help wondering whether his suicide is actually murder: “Why would a man shoot himself if you could overdose on insulin?” But Echo Valley Police Chief Grimes won’t hear a word about it, so Jo and her mentor-turned-partner, Squint MacAllister, are left on their own. Tye’s senior project, an innovative video game he was developing with Quinn and Ronny Buck, leads Jo to question everyone from professor Frederick Lucas, the instructor who’d tried to steal one of Tye’s earlier projects, to Ronny’s wealthy, powerful father, Xavier Buck, to District Attorney Zachary Walsenberg, whose son, Derek, killed himself a year ago while he was reviewing an earlier version of Tye’s game and whose wife, Alice, was Tye’s landlady. None of them takes any more kindly than Chief Grimes to Jo’s theories, and all of them carry a lot more clout than her. Not surprisingly, retired police captain Browning—who's previously written as Micki Browning—is best on Jo’s professional frustration with a department that values her labors as long as she doesn’t step out of line.
Thoroughly workmanlike, if not terribly original or surprising.Pub Date: Oct. 6, 2020
ISBN: 978-1-64385-535-6
Page Count: 395
Publisher: Crooked Lane
Review Posted Online: July 28, 2020
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 15, 2020
BOOK REVIEW
Feeney improves on her debut with a taut suspense plot, many gleeful twists and turns, and suspects galore.
A news presenter and a police detective are brought together by murders in the British village where they both grew up.
There is precious little that can be revealed about the plot of Feeney’s third novel without spoilers, as the author has woven surprises and plot twists and suspicious linkages into nearly every one of her brief, first-person chapters, written in three alternating narrative voices. “Hers” is Anna Andrews, a wannabe anchor on a BBC news program whose lucky break comes when the body of one of her school friends is found brutally murdered in their hometown, a woodsy little spot called Blackdown. “His” is DCI Jack Harper, head of the Major Crime Team in Blackdown, where major crimes were rather few until now. The third is unnamed but clearly the killer’s. Happily, none of the three is an unreliable narrator—good thing because plenty of people are sick of that—but none is exactly 100% forthcoming either. Which only makes sense, because you can't have reveals without secrets. In a small town like Blackdown, everybody knows everybody, so it’s not too surprising that Anna and Jack have a tragic past or that each has connections to all the victims and suspects while not being totally free from suspicion themselves. Who is that sneaky third narrator? On the way to figuring that out, expect high school mean girls, teen lesbian action, mutilated corpses, nasty things happening to kittens, and—as seems de rigueur in British thrillers—plenty of drinking and wisecracks, sometimes in tandem. “Sadly, my sister has the same taste in wine as she does in men; too cheap, too young, and headache-inducing.”
Feeney improves on her debut with a taut suspense plot, many gleeful twists and turns, and suspects galore.Pub Date: July 28, 2020
ISBN: 978-1-250-26608-8
Page Count: 320
Publisher: Flatiron Books
Review Posted Online: May 3, 2020
Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 15, 2020
BOOK TO SCREEN
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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