A short-story–sized mystery exploded by the triple-sized dose of vigilante justice Bosch gets to dispense as cop and father.
An apparently everyday murder in South Los Angeles takes Harry Bosch (The Brass Verdict, 2008, etc.) further and deeper than a case has ever sent him before.
Ordinarily the members of LAPD Robbery-Homicide’s Special Homicides squad wouldn’t touch a case as routine as the shooting of John Li. The elderly owner of Fortune Fine Foods and Liquors has been shot three times, presumably by the same person or persons who emptied his cash register and the surveillance video. Telltale clues and the testimony of Li’s frightened family members, however, suggest that their patriarch may have been executed by triad members when he refused to continue paying for protection. Unlike Ignacio Ferras, still spooked by the bullet he took for his partner, Bosch quickly gets his teeth into the case. But no sooner has he gathered enough evidence to arrest triad bagman Bo-Jing Chang than he’s threatened with unspecified evils if he doesn’t take off the heat. These evils swiftly assume malevolent shape when Bosch gets word that his daughter Madeline, half a world away in Hong Kong, has been kidnapped. Dropping everything to rescue the 13-year-old he’s known for only a few years, he flies to Hong Kong and embarks on a bravura sequence of action set-pieces evidently crafted with both eyes on the movies. (“Oliver Stone will direct it!” Lincoln Lawyer Mickey Haller exults.) Nine corpses later, Bosch is back in the United States with Madeline. He has to get her settled and deal with her traumatic memories; he has to face the Hong Kong police, who think for some reason that he’s a cowboy run amok; and of course he has to solve his case. After the exoticism and high intensity of his Far East adventures, however, these anticlimactic problems are resolved with suspicious facility.
A short-story–sized mystery exploded by the triple-sized dose of vigilante justice Bosch gets to dispense as cop and father.Pub Date: Oct. 13, 2009
ISBN: 978-0-316-16631-7
Page Count: 384
Publisher: Little, Brown
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Oct. 15, 2009
A top-notch psychological thriller.
In Hoag’s (The 9th Girl, 2013, etc.) latest, talented young newscaster Dana Nolan is left to navigate a psychological maze after escaping a serial killer.
While recuperating at home in Shelby Mills, Indiana, Dana meets her former high school classmates John Villante and Tim Carver. Football hero Tim is ashamed of flunking out of West Point, and now he’s a sheriff’s deputy. After Iraq and Afghanistan tours, John’s home with PTSD, "angry and bitter and dark." Dana survived abduction by serial killer Doc Holiday, but she still suffers from the gruesome attack by "the man who ruined her life, destroyed her career, shattered her sense of self, damaged her brain and her face." What binds the trio is their friend Casey Grant, who's been missing five years, perhaps also a Holiday victim, even if "[t]he odds against that kind of coincidence had to be astronomical." Hoag’s first 100 pages are a gut-wrenching dissection of the aftereffects of traumatic brain injury: Dana is plagued by "[f]ear, panic, grief, and anger" and haunted by fractured memories and nightmares. "Before Dana had believed in the inherent good in people. After Dana knew firsthand their capacity for evil." Impulsive and paranoid, Dana obsesses over linking Casey’s disappearance to Holiday, with her misfiring brain convincing her that "finding the truth about what had happened to Casey [was] her chance of redemption." But then Hoag tosses suspects into the narrative faster than Dana can count: Roger Mercer, Dana’s self-absorbed state senator stepfather; Mack Villante, who left son John with "no memories of his father that didn’t include drunkenness and cruelty"; even Hardy, the hard-bitten, cancer-stricken detective who investigated Casey’s disappearance. Tense, tightly woven, with every minor character, from Dana’s fiercely protective aunt to Mercer’s pudgy campaign chief, ratcheting up the tension, Hoag’s narrative explodes with an unexpected but believable conclusion.
A top-notch psychological thriller.Pub Date: Jan. 13, 2015
ISBN: 978-0-525-95454-5
Page Count: 368
Publisher: Dutton
Review Posted Online: Oct. 22, 2014
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Nov. 1, 2014
Lacking in both thrills and chills.
Another homage to classic horror from a bestselling author.
Sager’s debut novel, Final Girls (2017), wasn’t so much a horror novel as a commentary about horror movies in novel form. It was clever but also very well-crafted. The author tried to do something similar with The Last Time I Lied (2018), with significantly less satisfying results. This new novel is another attempt to make the model work. Whether or not it does depends on how invested one is in formula for the sake of formula. Jules Larsen is getting over a breakup and the loss of her job when she finds a gig that seems too good to be true: The Bartholomew, a storied Manhattan building, wants to pay her thousands of dollars to simply occupy a vacant—and luxurious—apartment. Jules soon gets the feeling that all is not as it seems at the Bartholomew, which is, of course, a perfect setup for some psychological suspense, but the problem is that there is little in the way of narrative tension because Jules’ situation is so obviously not right from the very beginning. While interviewing for the job, she's asked about her health history. She's informed that she is not allowed to have guests in the apartment. She's warned that she must not interact with or talk to anyone else about the building’s wealthy and famous inhabitants. And she learns that she will be paid under the table. While this might not be enough to deter someone who is broke and desperate, it does mean that Jules should be a bit more concerned than she is when the really scary stuff starts happening. It’s possible to read this as a parody of the absurdly intrepid horror heroine, but, even as that, it’s not a particularly entertaining parody. Jules’ best friend makes a reference to American Horror Story, which feels less like a postmodern nod than a reminder that there are other, better examples of the genre that one could be enjoying instead.
Lacking in both thrills and chills.Pub Date: July 2, 2019
ISBN: 978-1-5247-4514-1
Page Count: 384
Publisher: Dutton
Review Posted Online: April 13, 2019
Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 1, 2019
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