A beautifully stripped-down case that makes up in tension and velocity what it lacks in amplitude. Serialization hasn’t hurt...
In a 12-hour adventure first serialized in weekly installments in the New York Times Magazine, Harry Bosch finally catches a fresh case after years of resurrecting old ones (Echo Park, 2006, etc.), and it’s a honey.
Before he was shot to death at a scenic overlook on Mulholland Drive, Stanley Kent was a medical physicist who had access to the radioactive cesium used to treat uterine cancer. Because the murder looks like an execution, Bosch and his new partner, Ignacio (“call me Iggy”) Ferras of LAPD Homicide Special, are under orders to grab the case from Hollywood Homicide. In a breathtakingly short time, though, it’s grabbed from them by Rachel Walling, Bosch’s former lover, and her take-no-prisoners FBI partner Jack Brenner. The reason: Shortly before he died, Kent had driven to St. Agatha’s Clinic for Women and removed dozens of doses of cesium at the demand of the masked thugs who’d broken into his home, tied up his wife and threatened to rape and kill her. Alicia Kent is still alive, but her husband isn’t, and the cesium has vanished. Captain Don Hadley, the well-connected nincompoop in charge of L.A.’s Department of Homeland Security, is convinced the threat of a dirty bomb is linked to anti-American provocateur Ramin Samir; the FBI is more intent on locating a Syrian terrorist who goes by the nickname Moby. But Bosch is convinced the Feds have missed important clues, and soon he’s dug up an eyewitness to the crime and found new evidence at the Kent home. Both discoveries send him barreling into a series of jurisdictional battles that almost upstage the terrorist threat.
A beautifully stripped-down case that makes up in tension and velocity what it lacks in amplitude. Serialization hasn’t hurt Connelly any more than it did Charles Dickens, who’s cited at several key points.Pub Date: May 22, 2007
ISBN: 978-0-316-01895-1
Page Count: 240
Publisher: Little, Brown
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: April 15, 2007
BOOK TO SCREEN
Dark and unsettling, this novel’s end arrives abruptly even as readers are still moving at a breakneck speed.
Ten years after her teenage daughter went missing, a mother begins a new relationship only to discover she can't truly move on until she answers lingering questions about the past.
Laurel Mack’s life stopped in many ways the day her 15-year-old daughter, Ellie, left the house to study at the library and never returned. She drifted away from her other two children, Hanna and Jake, and eventually she and her husband, Paul, divorced. Ten years later, Ellie’s remains and her backpack are found, though the police are unable to determine the reasons for her disappearance and death. After Ellie’s funeral, Laurel begins a relationship with Floyd, a man she meets in a cafe. She's disarmed by Floyd’s charm, but when she meets his young daughter, Poppy, Laurel is startled by her resemblance to Ellie. As the novel progresses, Laurel becomes increasingly determined to learn what happened to Ellie, especially after discovering an odd connection between Poppy’s mother and her daughter even as her relationship with Floyd is becoming more serious. Jewell’s (I Found You, 2017, etc.) latest thriller moves at a brisk pace even as she plays with narrative structure: The book is split into three sections, including a first one which alternates chapters between the time of Ellie’s disappearance and the present and a second section that begins as Laurel and Floyd meet. Both of these sections primarily focus on Laurel. In the third section, Jewell alternates narrators and moments in time: The narrator switches to alternating first-person points of view (told by Poppy’s mother and Floyd) interspersed with third-person narration of Ellie’s experiences and Laurel’s discoveries in the present. All of these devices serve to build palpable tension, but the structure also contributes to how deeply disturbing the story becomes. At times, the characters and the emotional core of the events are almost obscured by such quick maneuvering through the weighty plot.
Dark and unsettling, this novel’s end arrives abruptly even as readers are still moving at a breakneck speed.Pub Date: April 24, 2018
ISBN: 978-1-5011-5464-5
Page Count: 368
Publisher: Atria
Review Posted Online: Feb. 5, 2018
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 15, 2018
A smoothly written contemporary caper paired with a murder mystery and a little meet-the-Jetsons futurism. No one does...
Written under her real name and her pseudonym, two books in one from megaselling Roberts/Robb.
Book one: Laine Tavish, gorgeous redhead and owner of a small-town antique store, isn’t about to tell the cops that she knew the old man who was hit by a car right outside her shop. Just before he took his dying breath, she recognized Willy Young, partner in crime to Big Jack O’Hara, her father. Their biggest heist: millions of dollars in hot diamonds. Her father went to prison, but not Willy, whose last words were “left it for you.” What did he leave—and where? Enter Max Gannon, insurance investigator and all-around stud, with thick, wavy, run-your-fingers-through-it hair, tawny eyes that remind Laine of a tiger, and a delicious Georgia drawl. He beds Laine pronto, and they solve the case. But some of the diamonds are still missing. . . . Book two: it’s 50 years later, and New York traffic is slower than ever: just try getting a helicab on a rainy day. But Samantha Gannon, author of a bestseller called Hot Rocks based on her grandparents’ experiences in the long-ago case, eventually makes it home from the airport to find her house-sitter Andrea dead, throat cut. Another investigation begins, spearheaded by Eve Dallas, a tough-talking but very appealing New York cop married to Roarke, a rich, eccentric genius who just barely manages to stay on the right side of the law. Is the murderer after the rest of the diamonds? And is he or she related to the master thief who betrayed Samantha’s great-grandfather? There are more burning questions, and Eve wants answers—but, first, get Central on the telelink and program the Autochef for pastrami on rye.
A smoothly written contemporary caper paired with a murder mystery and a little meet-the-Jetsons futurism. No one does Suspense Lite better than Nora.Pub Date: Sept. 1, 2003
ISBN: 0-399-15106-0
Page Count: 448
Publisher: Putnam
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 15, 2003
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