A feisty female federal prosecutor pursues the brutal killer of a beautiful muckraking television journalist while at the same time balancing her growing feelings for a hunky FBI agent.
Melanie Vargas (Most Wanted, 2005, etc.) tags along with ruggedly handsome agent and lover Dan O’Reilly to the scene of a bloody rape/murder in Central Park, and before you can say “DNA,” Vargas lands in the middle of the slaying of Suzanne Shepard. Shepard, a hard-hitting tabloid-TV journalist who specialized in exposing the misdeeds of the rich and famous, died at the hands of a killer the press quickly brands the “Central Park Butcher.” In an unlikely plot twist, the FBI and NYPD encourage Vargas to head the investigation. Soon she identifies the homicide’s only known witness—attorney David Harris. But Harris, who has secrets of his own, isn’t eager to talk to Vargas or the cops. The investigation also focuses on three very different suspects, any of whom might be the killer: the ambitious Clyde Williams, a powerful city official with his eye on the mayor’s mansion, who knows a scandal would derail his campaign; Miles Ortiz, a streetwise personal trainer specializing in keeping his rich clients happy—especially the gorgeous Kim Savitt; and Benedict Welch, a plastic surgeon with some dark habits and big skeletons in his closet. But the probe gets personal when the Butcher casts his eye in Vargas’s direction and turns the hunter into the hunted. Stalked by the killer and confused by her lover’s apparent duplicity, Vargas finds herself in a deadly trap when the pieces to Shepard’s killing finally fall into place, and the case spins out of control, heading for a deadly confrontation and a breathless conclusion.
The dialogue is clunky in places and Vargas’s role in the case seems implausible, but this fast-paced, suspenseful chick-lit thriller combines sexy romance with enough action to keep readers engaged.Pub Date: March 13, 2007
ISBN: 0-06-089900-X
Page Count: 352
Publisher: Morrow/HarperCollins
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 15, 2007
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BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
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
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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
Categories: GENERAL MYSTERY & DETECTIVE | MYSTERY & DETECTIVE
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