A realistically portrayed prison setting and a cast of characters depicted with complexity and nuance (Lister was himself a...
Second in a prison-crime series of realistic drama and surprising character depth.
When televangelist Bobby Earl Caldwell and his wife Bunny show up at Potter Correctional Institution to proselytize to the inmates, police investigator turned prison chaplain John Jordan (Power in the Blood, reviewed in the August 1, 1997, issue of Kirkus Reviews) is troubled to see their seven-year-old daughter Nicole Caldwell accompanying them to the prison. Parental love notwithstanding, the black five-year-old, adopted by the white couple, seems to be a rather valuable publicity element of the Caldwell ministry, but no matter: In short order, Nicole is found murdered in John's own locked office, and John's old investigation instincts re-emerge, eliciting the ire of the prison warden and his goon nephew DeAndré. Nonetheless, the former cop forges ahead. DeAndré is serving as the Caldwells' bodyguard during their stay at Potter, making him the first in a large cast of possible perps—including corrupt cops at the prison, convicted pedophiles and other inmates with liberal access to many parts of the facility, including John's quarters. Racial, religious and sexual tensions abound, and John, while chasing leads and searching for clues, also continues (picking up where he left off in Power in the Blood) to grapple with his own demons: his love for a married woman; his undying attraction to his estranged wife; and his precarious dance with his hard-won sobriety. The spiritual dimension of John's inner life adds a depth that's often absent in the mystery genre.
A realistically portrayed prison setting and a cast of characters depicted with complexity and nuance (Lister was himself a prison chaplain for seven years) together form a quietly effective character-study/whodunit.Pub Date: Aug. 1, 2004
ISBN: 1-932557-05-9
Page Count: -
Publisher: N/A
Review Posted Online: May 23, 2010
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
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
These letters from some important executive Down Below, to one of the junior devils here on earth, whose job is to corrupt mortals, are witty and written in a breezy style seldom found in religious literature. The author quotes Luther, who said: "The best way to drive out the devil, if he will not yield to texts of Scripture, is to jeer and flout him, for he cannot bear scorn." This the author does most successfully, for by presenting some of our modern and not-so-modern beliefs as emanating from the devil's headquarters, he succeeds in making his reader feel like an ass for ever having believed in such ideas. This kind of presentation gives the author a tremendous advantage over the reader, however, for the more timid reader may feel a sense of guilt after putting down this book. It is a clever book, and for the clever reader, rather than the too-earnest soul.
Pub Date: Jan. 1, 1942
ISBN: 0060652934
Page Count: 53
Publisher: Macmillan
Review Posted Online: Oct. 17, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: June 15, 1943
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