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
As the prosecutor sadly observes: “All this because of a dead buffalo.”
Idyllic Catalina Island turns out to be just as crime infested as the rest of Los Angeles County in the latest series launch by the creator of Harry Bosch, Renée Ballard, and the Lincoln Lawyer.
Det. Sgt. Stilwell has been bounced off the county homicide squad and rusticized to Catalina, where the exclusive Black Marlin Club won’t admit even four-term Avalon Mayor Doug Allen to full membership and the most serious infraction seems to be the killing and cutting up of a buffalo, presumably by Henry Gaston, who operates Island Mystery Tours when he’s not threatening endangered species. All that changes with the discovery of a body sunk in the surrounding waters. The corpse, most recognizable by its streak of purple hair, is that of Leigh-Anne Moss, a Black Marlin server recently fired for fraternizing with members and guests she sees as potential sugar daddies. Stilwell is sufficiently invested in her murder to compete vigorously over jurisdiction with Rex Ahearn, the LA County homicide detective who kept his job when Stilwell lost his. Their rivalry, fueled by mutual contempt, is only the first hint that Stilwell will end up fighting his counterparts in law enforcement and local government at least as hard as he fights crooks like hit man Merris Spivak and Oscar “Baby Head” Terranova, Henry’s boss, who comes under sharper scrutiny when Henry disappears and ends up dead himself. Connelly handles his hero’s obligatory romance with assistant harbormaster Tash Dano and his increasingly wary alliance with assistant D.A. Monika Juarez with equal professionalism, and if the wrap-up leaves some loose ends dangling, well, that’s what franchises are for.
As the prosecutor sadly observes: “All this because of a dead buffalo.”Pub Date: May 20, 2025
ISBN: 9780316588485
Page Count: 352
Publisher: Little, Brown
Review Posted Online: April 19, 2025
Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 15, 2025
More than any of his earlier cases, the comatose hero’s 26th adventure bears the hallmarks of a formal detective story.
Wyoming Game and Fish Warden Joe Pickett has been shot plenty of times before. But this time may be the last.
As Joe hovers between life and death in a Billings hospital, Box indicates that Dorn Peddy and James Dale O’Bryan are the two men who ambushed him, shot him, and left him for dead. But he doesn’t reveal who hired them or why. That’s left up to Joe’s three daughters: bird-abatement firm chief executive Sheridan, Bozeman private eye April, and University of Wyoming undergrad Lucy. Since the man who reported the incident to the Twelve Sleep County Sheriff’s Department has disappeared, the most that newly appointed Sheriff Steve Sondergard can do is to warn Sheridan and her sisters away from the case. But the fact that both the shooters and the witness seem to have come from one of exactly three places presents an obvious appeal to the younger Picketts, who plan to each visit one place and question the owners simultaneously before they can warn each other that anyone’s coming. The only problem is that all the possible suspects—billionaire Michael Thompson and his wife, Brandy, of the Double Diamond Ranch; ranchers John and Shelby Bucholz, of the Bucholz Cattle Company; and secretive sisters Lisa and Lainie McElwee, of McElwee Land and Cattle Ranch—act equally guilty. As Box unspools a series of flashbacks showing what Joe was up to in the weeks before the ambush, one question assumes paramount importance: Can Joe’s daughters identify which of them is behind the plot to murder their father before the hired gunmen visit the hospital and try again?
More than any of his earlier cases, the comatose hero’s 26th adventure bears the hallmarks of a formal detective story.Pub Date: Feb. 24, 2026
ISBN: 9780593851098
Page Count: 352
Publisher: Putnam
Review Posted Online: Nov. 22, 2025
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 1, 2026
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