An unyielding private investigator who unravels a mystery, and takes out criminal organizations in the interim.
In this debut thriller, a retired sheriff’s search for a missing ex-porn star leads to corrupt individuals with their hands in all sorts of illicit deeds—including murder.
Former cop Lt. Jack Conner only got his private eye license on the advice of lawyers who’d hired him for legal investigations. But he puts it to use when, while vacationing in San Diego, he spots an article on the unexplained disappearance of former porn star Asian Sin. Named Sara Jones by her adoptive parents, the missing woman sparks a memory of Xiu Tang, a Chinese medical student whom years ago teenaged Jack had loved. He’s determined to find Asian, first on his own but later with allies he steadily gathers, like adult bookstore owner Bill Parker, sharing Jack’s belief that Asian didn’t vanish willingly. Jack will need all the help he can get, as his probe turns up various criminal activities, from kidnappings to drug running. It’s perhaps no surprise when a few thugs rough him up, because his case threatens to expose any number of baddies. At the same time, he may have something for Keeley Nu, a lawyer for the adult film company that had signed Asian. He is, however, conflicted, a divorcé who falls in love too quickly but can’t quite commit as strongly to a woman as he does to investigative work. Lemley’s book has the earmarks of a detective story; Jack even gets a paycheck, eventually signing an agreement with Asian’s attorney, Dallas Xiao Xu, to protect their mutual exchange of information. But while there’s mystery and plenty of twists (especially character links), there are likewise signs of espionage. Jack faces gangsters, conducts surveillance outside the United States, and occasionally dodges bullets with capable pals, most notably Dan, Dallas’ driver who’s more than he seems. Tracking down Asian, though, is the main plot and never falters, and despite the bevy of bad guys and ensuing false leads (concerning the missing woman), the tale’s not convoluted. Jack’s not the most likable protagonist: he beds a few women, notwithstanding his apparent love for Keeley. Such a flaw makes him engrossing, and he furthermore acknowledges his womanizing, but it certainly doesn’t earn him sympathy.
An unyielding private investigator who unravels a mystery, and takes out criminal organizations in the interim.Pub Date: Aug. 5, 2016
ISBN: 978-1-5245-2568-2
Page Count: 340
Publisher: Xlibris
Review Posted Online: Nov. 10, 2016
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
Irritatingly trite woman-in-periler from lawyer-turned-novelist Baldacci. Moving away from the White House and the white-shoe Washington law firms of his previous bestsellers (Absolute Power, 1996; Total Control, 1997), Baldacci comes up with LuAnn Tyler, a spunky, impossibly beautiful, white-trash truck stop waitress with a no-good husband and a terminally cute infant daughter in tow. Some months after the birth of Lisa, LuAnn gets a phone call summoning her to a make-shift office in an unrented storefront of the local shopping mall. There, she gets a Faustian offer from a Mr. Jackson, a monomaniacal, cross-dressing manipulator who apparently knows the winning numbers in the national lottery before the numbers are drawn. It seems that LuAnn fits the media profile of what a lottery winner should be—poor, undereducated but proud—and if she's willing to buy the right ticket at the right time and transfer most of her winnings to Jackson, she'll be able to retire in luxury. Jackson fails to inform her, however, that if she refuses his offer, he'll have her killed. Before that can happen, as luck would have it, LuAnn barely escapes death when one of husband Duane's drug deals goes bad. She hops on a first-class Amtrak sleeper to Manhattan with a hired executioner in pursuit. But executioner Charlie, one of Jackson's paid handlers, can't help but hear wedding bells when he sees LuAnn cooing with her daughter. Alas, a winning $100- million lottery drawing complicates things. Jackson spirits LuAnn and Lisa away to Sweden, with Charlie in pursuit. Never fear. Not only will LuAnn escape a series of increasingly violent predicaments, but she'll also outwit Jackson, pay an enormous tax bill to the IRS, and have enough left over to honeymoon in Switzerland. Too preposterous to work as feminine wish-fulfillment, too formulaic to be suspenseful. (Book-of-the-Month Club main selection)
Pub Date: Dec. 2, 1997
ISBN: 0-446-52259-7
Page Count: 528
Publisher: N/A
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Oct. 15, 1997
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