Solid journeyman work, not dated but not especially memorable either.
From the creator of private eye Dan Fortune comes a miscellany of 17 stories, all but one published between 1962 and 1973. Many describe flawed criminal plots whose single twists rapidly become predictable. The bank officer’s scheme to leave his employer and his wife holding the bag in “Death, My Love” and the solid citizens’ set-ups of crooked patsies in “Silent Partner” and “The Choice” are just waiting to backfire. Collins’s cops are easy to read whether they’re going it on their own, like Syracuse detective Mack Forbes in “Hard Cop,” or working, amusingly laid-back, within the system, like fat patrolman Emil Berger in “Harness Bull.” Other detective stories are more varied. The impossible-crime scenario in “The Bizarre Case Expert” is labored, and the studied anticlimaxes in “Nobody Frames Big Sam” and “Hot Night Homicide” modish rather than pointed, but the murder of a burglar in “Occupational Hazard” shows the author at his most ingenious. When he turns to espionage, Collins works within the limits of early le Carré. His favorite sort of hero—the stoic agent who knows he’s going to be betrayed but who goes ahead anyway—turns up in two remarkably similar stories, “Success of a Mission” and “Clay Pigeon.” When the stoic type takes an encore in the only recent story here, the 1999 “A Part of History,” the perspective on an anti-Nazi assassination plot is longer and richer, but the characters and prose are as unchanged as if preserved in amber.
Solid journeyman work, not dated but not especially memorable either.Pub Date: April 1, 2001
ISBN: 0-7862-3932-8
Page Count: 250
Publisher: Five Star/Gale Cengage
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 1, 2002
More of a western than a mystery, like most of Joe’s adventures, and all the better for the open physical clashes that...
Wyoming Game and Fish Warden Joe Pickett (Free Fire, 2007, etc.), once again at the governor’s behest, stalks the wraithlike figure who’s targeting elk hunters for death.
Frank Urman was taken down by a single rifle shot, field-dressed, beheaded and hung upside-down to bleed out. (You won’t believe where his head eventually turns up.) The poker chip found near his body confirms that he’s the third victim of the Wolverine, a killer whose animus against hunters is evidently being whipped up by anti-hunting activist Klamath Moore. The potential effects on the state’s hunting revenues are so calamitous that Governor Spencer Rulon pulls out all the stops, and Pickett is forced to work directly with Wyoming Game and Fish Director Randy Pope, the boss who fired him from his regular job in Saddlestring District. Three more victims will die in rapid succession before Joe is given a more congenial colleague: Nate Romanowski, the outlaw falconer who pledged to protect Joe’s family before he was taken into federal custody. As usual in this acclaimed series, the mystery is slight and its solution eminently guessable long before it’s confirmed by testimony from an unlikely source. But the people and scenes and enduring conflicts that lead up to that solution will stick with you for a long time.
More of a western than a mystery, like most of Joe’s adventures, and all the better for the open physical clashes that periodically release the tension between the scheming adversaries.Pub Date: May 20, 2008
ISBN: 978-0-399-15488-1
Page Count: 320
Publisher: Putnam
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 15, 2008
An anodyne visit with Tricia and her friends and enemies hung on a thin mystery.
Too much free time leads a New Hampshire bookseller into yet another case of murder.
Now that Tricia Miles has Pixie Poe and Mr. Everett practically running her bookstore, Haven’t Got a Clue, she finds herself at loose ends. Her wealthy sister, Angelica, who in the guise of Nigela Ricita has invested heavily in making Stoneham a bookish tourist attraction, is entering the amateur competition for the Great Booktown Bake-Off. So Tricia, who’s recently taken up baking as a hobby, decides to join her and spends a lot of time looking for the perfect cupcake recipe. A visit to another bookstore leaves Tricia witnessing a nasty argument between owner Joyce Widman and next-door neighbor Vera Olson over the trimming of tree branches that hang over Joyce’s yard—also overheard by new town police officer Cindy Pearson. After Tricia accepts Joyce’s offer of some produce from her garden, they find Vera skewered by a pitchfork, and when Police Chief Grant Baker arrives, Joyce is his obvious suspect. Ever since Tricia moved to Stoneham, the homicide rate has skyrocketed (Poisoned Pages, 2018, etc.), and her history with Baker is fraught. She’s also become suspicious about the activities at Pets-A-Plenty, the animal shelter where Vera was a dedicated volunteer. Tricia’s offered her expertise to the board, but president Toby Kingston has been less than welcoming. With nothing but baking on her calendar, Tricia has plenty of time to investigate both the murder and her vague suspicions about the shelter. Plenty of small-town friendships and rivalries emerge in her quest for the truth.
An anodyne visit with Tricia and her friends and enemies hung on a thin mystery.Pub Date: Aug. 13, 2019
ISBN: 978-1-9848-0272-9
Page Count: 320
Publisher: Berkley
Review Posted Online: May 26, 2019
Kirkus Reviews Issue: June 15, 2019
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