Crime fiction that gives chaos an entertaining ride.
After a cellphone containing "hot documents" that spell trouble for a legally embroiled New York bank gets pickpocketed, the corporate law firm representing the bank turns to a government fixer with serious CIA experience to limit the damage.
The mobile device contains texts, emails, and memos revealing that the Calcott Corporation has been illicitly funneling money to a shell company in Oman. Should that information become public, it would tip the scales of a federal law suit Calcott is defending following a failed merger. The phone was swiped—or made to look like it was swiped—from a young lawyer on the team representing Calcott. Faced with recovering the phone and dealing with the shady parties into whose hands it's fallen, Elizabeth Carlyle, the imposing but easily unnerved head of the firm, calls upon glamorous ex–CIA case officer Valencia Walker to save the day. A problem-solver of high repute, Valencia traces the phone to three hustling Jewish Russian brothers in Brooklyn. They're easily enough dealt with, but the same can't be said of their powerful Uncle Yakov, whom neither they nor Valencia want to rub the wrong way. But Yakov proves to be small-time compared to the hidden schemers at work here. An enjoyably hard-boiled yarn streaked with noir effects, Hoffman's follow-up to Every Man a Menace (2016) is a skillfully orchestrated effort that achieves its most outlandish effects with nifty understatement. It is a book of constantly moving parts and constantly moving vehicles, as characters race across New York City to avert disaster. Ultimately, the author is less concerned with the human cost—little feeling is attached to characters' deaths—than the long reach of corruption in the modern era.
Crime fiction that gives chaos an entertaining ride.Pub Date: June 2, 2020
ISBN: 978-0-8021-2953-6
Page Count: 288
Publisher: Atlantic Monthly
Review Posted Online: March 29, 2020
Kirkus Reviews Issue: April 15, 2020
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
Amateurish, with a twist savvy readers will see coming from a mile away.
A woman accused of shooting her husband six times in the face refuses to speak.
"Alicia Berenson was thirty-three years old when she killed her husband. They had been married for seven years. They were both artists—Alicia was a painter, and Gabriel was a well-known fashion photographer." Michaelides' debut is narrated in the voice of psychotherapist Theo Faber, who applies for a job at the institution where Alicia is incarcerated because he's fascinated with her case and believes he will be able to get her to talk. The narration of the increasingly unrealistic events that follow is interwoven with excerpts from Alicia's diary. Ah, yes, the old interwoven diary trick. When you read Alicia's diary you'll conclude the woman could well have been a novelist instead of a painter because it contains page after page of detailed dialogue, scenes, and conversations quite unlike those in any journal you've ever seen. " 'What's the matter?' 'I can't talk about it on the phone, I need to see you.' 'It's just—I'm not sure I can make it up to Cambridge at the minute.' 'I'll come to you. This afternoon. Okay?' Something in Paul's voice made me agree without thinking about it. He sounded desperate. 'Okay. Are you sure you can't tell me about it now?' 'I'll see you later.' Paul hung up." Wouldn't all this appear in a diary as "Paul wouldn't tell me what was wrong"? An even more improbable entry is the one that pins the tail on the killer. While much of the book is clumsy, contrived, and silly, it is while reading passages of the diary that one may actually find oneself laughing out loud.
Amateurish, with a twist savvy readers will see coming from a mile away.Pub Date: Feb. 5, 2019
ISBN: 978-1-250-30169-7
Page Count: 304
Publisher: Celadon Books
Review Posted Online: Nov. 3, 2018
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Nov. 15, 2018
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
More than any of his earlier cases, the comatose hero’s 26th adventure bears the hallmarks of a formal detective story.
Wyoming Game and Fish Warden Joe Pickett has been shot plenty of times before. But this time may be the last.
As Joe hovers between life and death in a Billings hospital, Box indicates that Dorn Peddy and James Dale O’Bryan are the two men who ambushed him, shot him, and left him for dead. But he doesn’t reveal who hired them or why. That’s left up to Joe’s three daughters: bird-abatement firm chief executive Sheridan, Bozeman private eye April, and University of Wyoming undergrad Lucy. Since the man who reported the incident to the Twelve Sleep County Sheriff’s Department has disappeared, the most that newly appointed Sheriff Steve Sondergard can do is to warn Sheridan and her sisters away from the case. But the fact that both the shooters and the witness seem to have come from one of exactly three places presents an obvious appeal to the younger Picketts, who plan to each visit one place and question the owners simultaneously before they can warn each other that anyone’s coming. The only problem is that all the possible suspects—billionaire Michael Thompson and his wife, Brandy, of the Double Diamond Ranch; ranchers John and Shelby Bucholz, of the Bucholz Cattle Company; and secretive sisters Lisa and Lainie McElwee, of McElwee Land and Cattle Ranch—act equally guilty. As Box unspools a series of flashbacks showing what Joe was up to in the weeks before the ambush, one question assumes paramount importance: Can Joe’s daughters identify which of them is behind the plot to murder their father before the hired gunmen visit the hospital and try again?
More than any of his earlier cases, the comatose hero’s 26th adventure bears the hallmarks of a formal detective story.Pub Date: Feb. 24, 2026
ISBN: 9780593851098
Page Count: 352
Publisher: Putnam
Review Posted Online: Nov. 22, 2025
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 1, 2026
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