Memorable characters plus deft plotting equals enjoyable page-turner.
A hapless young jailbird agrees to infiltrate a white supremacist compound in Colorado in exchange for being set free, only to realize the deal offered by police has big holes in it.
The jailbird, Bunny Simpson, whose polite manner barely conceals his violent streak, gets sent to prison along with his best friend, Jerry LeClair, after a quick moneymaking scheme goes south. Helen McCalla, an attorney to whom Jerry sells steroids to support her new bodybuilding habit, hires him to beat up her two-timing ex-husband, a local judge, during one of his morning runs. Jerry (whose unlikely relationship with Helen is surprisingly touching) promptly calls on the reluctant Bunny to handle the physical stuff. After a botched encounter in the park leads to the arrest of Bunny and Jerry, a pair of suspect cops make their offer, knowing that Bunny’s Uncle Willard is behind the white supremacists. He runs the car dealership that serves as a cover for the high-stakes drug operation that funds the compound. The cops are after the codes to the Bitcoin account from which the money flows. Bunny has never liked Willard, his drug-addicted mother’s brother, who mysteriously disappeared years ago. Hired by the dealership before surprising Willard with his presence, Bunny is quickly transferred to the compound, where, under intense pressure from the cops and at great risk, he snoops around for the evidence they demand. Some heavy late developments throw the book out of balance. But Hoffman makes us care for characters who in other hands wouldn’t pass that test, and he is masterly in combining humor and suspense.
Memorable characters plus deft plotting equals enjoyable page-turner.Pub Date: March 18, 2025
ISBN: 9780802164124
Page Count: 288
Publisher: Atlantic Monthly
Review Posted Online: March 22, 2025
Kirkus Reviews Issue: April 15, 2025
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
High art meets low life in a tale a lot more sympathetic to the latter.
Someone is stalking the streets of Lt. Eve Dallas’s New York, intent on bringing new life to sex workers by snuffing out their old ones.
In 2061, prostitutes are called licensed companions, and that’s Leesa Culver’s job description when she’s accosted by a plausible-looking artist who wants to hire her as a model for the night. Before the night is over, she’s been drugged, strangled, costumed, and posed as an uncanny replica of Vermeer’s Girl With a Pearl Earring. The shock of the crime is deepened by the murder the following night of licensed companion Bobby Ren, whose body is discovered at an art gallery entrance costumed and posed as Gainsborough’s Blue Boy. The killer clearly has an obsessive agenda, a rapid-fire timetable, and access to unlimited financial resources that have allowed him to commission expensive custom-made outfits for the victims. This last detail both marks his power and points to the way Dallas, her gazillionaire husband, Roarke, and her sidekick, Det. Delia Peabody, will track him down by methodically narrowing the field of consumers who’ve purchased the costly costumes. After identifying the guilty party two-thirds of the way through the story, they’ll still face an uphill battle convicting a killer with no conscience, no respect for the law, and a budget that would easily cover the means to jump bail, remove his ankle tracker, and hire a private jet to escape to a foreign land with no extradition treaty. Robb keeps it all consistently absorbing by sweating every procedural detail along with her heroine. Only Dallas’ climactic interrogation of her prisoner is a letdown, because it’s perfectly obvious how she’s going to wangle a confession out of him.
High art meets low life in a tale a lot more sympathetic to the latter.Pub Date: Sept. 2, 2025
ISBN: 9781250370822
Page Count: 368
Publisher: St. Martin's
Review Posted Online: May 16, 2025
Kirkus Reviews Issue: June 15, 2025
The best news of all: The climax leaves the door open to further reports from the hilariously misnamed British Intelligence.
A series of mounting complications leads to yet another fight to the death between the discarded intelligence agents of Slough House and the morally bankrupt head of MI5.
As Jackson Lamb’s motley crew on Aldersgate Street struggles to cope with the deaths of River Cartwright’s grandfather and mentor, intelligence veteran David Cartwright, and their dim, beloved colleague Min Harper, new troubles are brewing. Diana Taverner, who runs the British Intelligence Service from Regent’s Park, is being blackmailed by former MP Peter Judd to do his bidding. Nothing untoward about that, of course, but this time, Judd’s demands, backed by a compromising tape recording, are more pressing than usual. So Diana reconvenes the Brains Trust—Al Hawke, Avril Potts, Daisy Wessex, and their ex-boss Charles Cornell Stamoran—whose last assignment was to serve as the contact for psychopathic IRA informant Dougie Malone while turning a blind eye to his multiple rapes and murders, which were really none of the Crown’s business. Taverner’s new assignment for the Brains Trust is the assassination of Judd. Since all these developments are filtered through the riotously cynical lens of Herron’s imagination, nothing goes as planned, and when the smoke clears, the fatalities don’t include Judd. Now that Judd knows he has as much reason to fear Taverner as she does to fear him, Lamb offers to broker a peace meeting between them which Slough House computer geek Roddy Ho will keep secret by knocking out 37 security cameras around Taverner’s dwelling. What could possibly go wrong?
The best news of all: The climax leaves the door open to further reports from the hilariously misnamed British Intelligence.Pub Date: Sept. 9, 2025
ISBN: 9781641297264
Page Count: 352
Publisher: Soho Crime
Review Posted Online: May 30, 2025
Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 1, 2025
PROFILES
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