In a debut novel that promises to be the first volume of an engaging urban fantasy series, Baker introduces a hard-edged but appealing heroine and a version of Los Angeles that pairs Hollywood with a magical parallel world.
Millicent Roper lost both her legs and her aspirations for a career in film after an unsuccessful suicide attempt. She installs herself in a psychiatric facility in Los Angeles, fading under the burden of borderline personality disorder and a surfeit of associated unhappiness, until a mysterious stranger offers her a job at the Arcadia Project. Jerked out of her self-imposed inertia, Millie discovers that magic—real, world-warping magic—exists and that her prospective employers are part of a shady organization charged with regulating traffic between the human and fairy worlds. Her introduction to this strange reality offers the reader plenty of comforting entertainment, despite the fact that the Arcadia Project is staffed by former psychiatric patients, often troubled and unpredictable. Millie meets a host of appealing, oddball characters and finds herself embroiled in a conspiracy with elements of Hollywood glamour, gritty mystery, and lavish fairy-tale magic. The plot trundles along at a pleasant clip, and the story is easy to keep reading, though it sometimes layers so many unlikely incidents that it strains credibility even in a world stuffed with the fantastical. Millie, brash and volatile, crashes through and pulls everything along in her wake. Though often waylaid by the troubles of her mind and difficulties of her body, Millie’s stubborn insistence on survival and frequent matter-of-fact dissections of her problems manage to provoke fondness instead of pity. She faces catastrophic damage and carries on with the verve, sarcasm, and decency that bode well for a developing series.
An enjoyable fantasy mystery that tackles physical disability and mental illness without sacrificing diverting, fast-paced storytelling.Pub Date: March 1, 2016
ISBN: 978-1-4814-5306-6
Page Count: 416
Publisher: Saga/Simon & Schuster
Review Posted Online: Feb. 13, 2016
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 15, 2016
Categories: FANTASY | MYSTERY & DETECTIVE
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BOOK REVIEW
PERSPECTIVES
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. 23, 2019
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 15, 2020
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An appealing new heroine, a fast-moving plot, and a memorably nightmarish family make this one of Box’s best.
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The creator of Wyoming Fish and Game Warden Joe Pickett (Wolf Pack, 2019, etc.) launches a new series starring a female private eye who messes with a powerful family and makes everyone involved rue the day.
Cassie Dewell’s been taking a monthly retainer from Bozeman attorney Rachel Mitchell for investigations of one sort and another, but she really doesn’t want to look into the case of Rachel’s newest client. That’s partly because Blake Kleinsasser, the fourth-generation firstborn of a well-established ranching family who moved to New York and made his own bundle before returning back home, comes across as a repellent jerk and partly because all the evidence indicates that he raped Franny Porché, his 15-year-old niece. And there’s plenty of evidence, from a rape kit showing his DNA to a lengthy, plausible statement from Franny. But Cassie owes Rachel, and Rachel tells her she doesn’t have to dig up exculpatory evidence, just follow the trail where it leads so that she can close off every other possibility. So Cassie agrees even though there’s an even more compelling reason not to: The Kleinsassers—Horst II and Margaret and their three other children, John Wayne, Rand, and Cheyenne, Franny’s thrice-divorced mother—are not only toxic, but viperishly dangerous to Blake and now Cassie. Everyone in Lochsa County, from Sheriff Ben Wagy on down, is in their pockets, and everyone Cassie talks to, from the Kleinsassers to the local law, finds new ways to make her life miserable. But Cassie, an ex-cop single mother, isn’t one to back down, especially since she wonders why anyone would take all the trouble to stop an investigation of a case that was as rock-solid as this one’s supposed to be.
An appealing new heroine, a fast-moving plot, and a memorably nightmarish family make this one of Box’s best.Pub Date: Aug. 13, 2019
ISBN: 978-1-250-05105-9
Page Count: 320
Publisher: Minotaur
Review Posted Online: May 27, 2019
Kirkus Reviews Issue: June 15, 2019
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