An engaging sequel that will leave readers hoping Luc returns yet again.
As his past comes back, peeling away the layers of protection he’s constructed to restart his life, investigative reporter Luc Actar becomes ensnared in a web of consequences stemming from malpractice within the mental health system of Los Angeles.
Luc returns for his second starring role in Garcia’s (Falling Angels, 2006, etc.) latest page-turner. Born into poverty and raised by an abusive, alcoholic father, Luc learned early on how to fend for himself on the streets of LA. After several run-ins with the law and a career as a car thief, he blossomed into a star journalist for Crime Reporter, with a specialty in uncovering police corruption in Southern California. Now, he’s living with Mattie Hardwin, ex-wife of his best friend, in her Malibu home, he drives a Porsche of questionable provenance and has determinedly been putting his past behind him. But when the police come to tell him that his estranged father has died, Luc becomes inexorably drawn into the investigation of mental health records stolen by the elder Actar, and he soon finds himself in the center of a string of murders that threaten everyone and everything that’s important to him. Garcia is a skillful novelist, and she makes good use of Luc’s first-person narrative to plumb the depths of the fears and self-deprecation that lie beneath his combative, trouble-prone exterior. Readers get only glimpses into the character development of the large supporting cast—even Mattie, the pivotal motivator in Luc’s life, is a bit of a cipher—but this is Luc’s story, after all, and readers will find themselves hoping he can skirt the edges of what seems like an inevitable decline into an abyss of self-destruction. Some interesting plot twists liven up the story, and the appearance of Chris Actar, a young teenager who may or may not be Luc’s half brother, adds even more complexity to a man still trying to define himself.
An engaging sequel that will leave readers hoping Luc returns yet again.Pub Date: Nov. 12, 2012
ISBN: 978-1480258112
Page Count: 256
Publisher: CreateSpace
Review Posted Online: June 3, 2013
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 1, 2013
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
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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