Knowles builds for impact and speed. Even the ruthless hero’s matter-of-fact reflections on his felonious craft (“The games...
The fifth recorded caper for the thief who, imitating Richard Stark’s Parker, is known only as Wilson dangles a fortune in jewels in front of him and an ill-fated crew.
David Phillips and his brother-in-law, Alvin, offer a nifty target for a heist: Mendelson Jewels, where David works as a jewelry designer for Saul Mendelson, who’s become a little absent-minded and more than a little paranoid as he’s gotten on in years. During one special weekend, Mendelson will be holding a million dollars’ worth of sparklers waiting for the right personnel to grab, and Vin believes he’s assembled just the right personnel: strong-armed Johnny, a racist ex-con, and his buddy Tony; a pair of safecrackers both named Diego; Elliot, a hacker who can get inside the firm’s computer system; Monica, an African-American driver; and Wilson (The Buffalo Job, 2014, etc.) and his friend Miles. The group’s original plan, which already sounds pretty complicated, is aborted when two apparently indispensable members of the crew are killed in a car crash, leaving Wilson, who always thought nine people were too many for the job in the first place, to try his luck together with Monica and Miles. When this second attempt is stymied as well, Wilson realizes that he’s up against a rival thief just as smart and ruthless as he is, somebody who’s been playing him from the beginning. As in Jeffery Deaver’s very different thrillers, identifying the other thief doesn’t end the complications. Neither does killing the other thief. The tension will ease only when breathless readers turn the very last page.
Knowles builds for impact and speed. Even the ruthless hero’s matter-of-fact reflections on his felonious craft (“The games we play are never fair and they never end clean. They just end”) achieve a truly baleful economy.Pub Date: May 16, 2017
ISBN: 978-1-77041-101-2
Page Count: 296
Publisher: ECW Press
Review Posted Online: Feb. 1, 2017
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 15, 2017
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
A run-of-the-mill mystery that includes some welcome tips on the health benefits of chocolate.
An accountant and her lawyer husband must revisit his high school days in order to solve a murder.
Lee Woodyard is no fan of the scheme her husband, Joe, and her uncle, Hogan Jones, the local police chief, hatch to buy the Bailey house next door and flip it. But even though she’d rather be at her job as business manager at her aunt’s chocolate specialty shop (The Chocolate Bunny Brouhaha, 2016, etc.), she agrees to meet with the plumber for an estimate—a meeting that turns dangerous when plumber Digger Brown finds a bundle of rags in the cellar. When he drops them, a gun hidden in the bundle goes off, sending a bullet whizzing past Lee. No one seems to know where the old fashioned six-shooter came from, but the accident recalls a past incident in which the Sharks, a group of high school boys that included Brad Davis, Chip Brown, Sharpy Brock, Tad Bailey, and Spud Dirk, pulled a prank that could have been deadly. Years ago, when several Sharks pretended as a joke to rob a convenience store in which Brad was working, Brad pulled a real gun and fired but hit nothing more vital than the Frozen Rainbow Machine. Now Brad’s the president of the VanHorn–Davis Foundation, whose charitable donations underwrite many improvements to the Michigan lakeside town of Warner Pier. When Lee accompanies Hogan to the Bailey house to show him where the gun was, they find more than they bargained for—Spud’s corpse in a cupboard. Although Hogan’s the police chief, he must stay out of the investigation because Spud had been competing with him to buy the Bailey house. So Lee, who’d prefer to stick to chocolates, is forced to join Joe in detective work.
A run-of-the-mill mystery that includes some welcome tips on the health benefits of chocolate.Pub Date: Nov. 5, 2019
ISBN: 978-0-593-10000-4
Page Count: 256
Publisher: Berkley
Review Posted Online: Aug. 18, 2019
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 1, 2019
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
Joe’s fifth case is his best balanced, most deeply felt and most mystifying to date: an absolute must.
Crime-fighting Wyoming game warden Joe Pickett outdoes himself during a temporary transfer from sleepy Saddlestring to fashionable Jackson Hole.
Will Jensen, the Jackson game warden, was a great guy and a model warden, but once his wife left him six months ago, he spiraled into madness and suicide, and now Joe’s been called to replace him. The transition is anything but smooth. There’s no question of Joe’s family coming with him, so he’s reduced to hoping he can get a signal for the cell-phone calls he squeezes into his busy schedule. En route to his new posting, Joe has to pursue a marauding grizzly. He arrives to meet a formidable series of challenges. Cantankerous outfitter Smoke Van Horn wants to go on attracting elk with illegal salt licks without the new warden’s interference. Animal Liberation Network activist Pi Stevenson wants him to publicize her cause and adopt a vegan diet. Developer Don Ennis wants to open a housing development for millionaires who like their meat free of additives. Ennis’s trophy wife Stella simply wants Joe—and he wants her back. As he wrestles with these demands, and with a supervisor riled over Joe’s track record of destroying government property in pursuit of bad guys (Trophy Hunt, 2004, etc.), Joe slowly becomes convinced that Will did not kill himself.
Joe’s fifth case is his best balanced, most deeply felt and most mystifying to date: an absolute must.Pub Date: May 5, 2005
ISBN: 0-399-15291-1
Page Count: 320
Publisher: Putnam
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: April 1, 2005
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