A supernatural crime novel, with an engaging main character, that doesn’t live up to its potential.
In Dalzell’s debut supernatural thriller, a seemingly mundane case sends British private detective Jack Bone to the mysterious town of Wolfston, England, where he stumbles into a nest of vampires.
Detective Bone is an aging former cop–turned–private eye who’s hired to find out how a woolen mill in Wolfston has remained profitable. What he finds out stuns him: The mill, owned by Silas Laughton, runs 24 hours, seven days a week—manned by humans by day and by vampires (called the Nosferatu) at night. Laughton warns Bone that the Nosferatu’s existence must remain a secret; Bone can keep his life, he says, in return for not mentioning vampires to his client. During Bone’s next case, he crosses a Russian crime gang while looking into a human-smuggling ring. When his life is threatened by two thugs, Laughton’s vampire daughter, Mina, and her vampire friend Alice come to his rescue. Although it’s never entirely clear why the Nosferatu decide to help Bone, he teams up with them to stop the smuggling operation. Unfortunately, what might have been an engaging tale is undone by story elements that strain credulity. For example, readers may find it hard to fathom that vampires would work as laborers in a woolen mill or that an English town could house so many vampires unnoticed. Also, much of the violence in Dalzell’s novel seems gratuitous; readers can understand the gruesomeness of vampire killings without play-by-plays of ripped limbs and blood-splattered faces. The novel also isn’t very scary, perhaps due to the fact that there’s little mystery behind the creatures; most of the vampires in Wolfston seem to be relatively ordinary small-town folk. That said, Dalzell’s prose is solid, and he shows a particularly good knack for the crime genre. Bone, in particular, is an intriguing protagonist with depth and character. Perhaps in his next novel, the author might leave the vampires out.
A supernatural crime novel, with an engaging main character, that doesn’t live up to its potential.Pub Date: April 11, 2012
ISBN: 978-1458203137
Page Count: 300
Publisher: AbbottPress
Review Posted Online: Aug. 19, 2013
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
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BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
Slaughter (Cop Town, 2014, etc.) is so uncompromising in following her blood trails to the darkest places imaginable that...
Twenty-four years after a traumatic disappearance tore a Georgia family apart, Slaughter’s scorching stand-alone picks them up and shreds them all over again.
The Carrolls have never been the same since 19-year-old Julia vanished. After years of fruitlessly pestering the police, her veterinarian father, Sam, killed himself; her librarian mother, Helen, still keeps the girl's bedroom untouched, just in case. Julia’s sisters have been equally scarred. Lydia Delgado has sold herself for drugs countless times, though she’s been clean for years now; Claire Scott has just been paroled after knee-capping her tennis partner for a thoughtless remark. The evening that Claire’s ankle bracelet comes off, her architect husband, Paul, is callously murdered before her eyes and, without a moment's letup, she stumbles on a mountainous cache of snuff porn. Paul’s business partner, Adam Quinn, demands information from Claire and threatens her with dire consequences if she doesn’t deliver. The Dunwoody police prove as ineffectual as ever. FBI agent Fred Nolan is more suavely menacing than helpful. So Lydia and Claire, who’ve grown so far apart that they’re virtual strangers, are unwillingly thrown back on each other for help. Once she’s plunged you into this maelstrom, Slaughter shreds your own nerves along with those of the sisters, not simply by a parade of gruesome revelations—though she supplies them in abundance—but by peeling back layer after layer from beloved family members Claire and Lydia thought they knew. The results are harrowing.
Slaughter (Cop Town, 2014, etc.) is so uncompromising in following her blood trails to the darkest places imaginable that she makes most of her high-wire competition look pallid, formulaic, or just plain fake.Pub Date: Sept. 29, 2015
ISBN: 978-0-06-242905-6
Page Count: 400
Publisher: Morrow/HarperCollins
Review Posted Online: June 30, 2015
Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 15, 2015
With an aura of both enchantment and authenticity, Bardugo’s compulsively readable novel leaves a portal ajar for equally...
Yale’s secret societies hide a supernatural secret in this fantasy/murder mystery/school story.
Most Yale students get admitted through some combination of impressive academics, athletics, extracurriculars, family connections, and donations, or perhaps bribing the right coach. Not Galaxy “Alex” Stern. The protagonist of Bardugo’s (King of Scars, 2019, etc.) first novel for adults, a high school dropout and low-level drug dealer, Alex got in because she can see dead people. A Yale dean who's a member of Lethe, one of the college’s famously mysterious secret societies, offers Alex a free ride if she will use her spook-spotting abilities to help Lethe with its mission: overseeing the other secret societies’ occult rituals. In Bardugo’s universe, the “Ancient Eight” secret societies (Lethe is the eponymous Ninth House) are not just old boys’ breeding grounds for the CIA, CEOs, Supreme Court justices, and so on, as they are in ours; they’re wielders of actual magic. Skull and Bones performs prognostications by borrowing patients from the local hospital, cutting them open, and examining their entrails. St. Elmo’s specializes in weather magic, useful for commodities traders; Aurelian, in unbreakable contracts; Manuscript goes in for glamours, or “illusions and lies,” helpful to politicians and movie stars alike. And all these rituals attract ghosts. It’s Alex’s job to keep the supernatural forces from embarrassing the magical elite by releasing chaos into the community (all while trying desperately to keep her grades up). “Dealing with ghosts was like riding the subway: Do not make eye contact. Do not smile. Do not engage. Otherwise, you never know what might follow you home.” A townie’s murder sets in motion a taut plot full of drug deals, drunken assaults, corruption, and cover-ups. Loyalties stretch and snap. Under it all runs the deep, dark river of ambition and anxiety that at once powers and undermines the Yale experience. Alex may have more reason than most to feel like an imposter, but anyone who’s spent time around the golden children of the Ivy League will likely recognize her self-doubt.
With an aura of both enchantment and authenticity, Bardugo’s compulsively readable novel leaves a portal ajar for equally dazzling sequels.Pub Date: Oct. 1, 2019
ISBN: 978-1-250-31307-2
Page Count: 448
Publisher: Flatiron Books
Review Posted Online: June 30, 2019
Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 15, 2019
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