As scenically evocative as Bowditch’s first four cases but not nearly as dense, conclusive, or interesting.
The disappearance of two Georgia women hiking the Appalachian Trail gives Maine Game Warden Mike Bowditch a welcome reprieve from the persistent personal problems that keep intruding into his cases, or serving as their foundations (The Bone Orchard, 2014, etc.).
Well-prepared as they seemed for the Hundred-Mile Wilderness, Samantha “Baby Ruth” Boggs and Missy “Naomi Walks” Montgomery have been swallowed up by a stretch without food, drinking water, or reliable cellphone reception. Pulled away from a romantic weekend with wildlife biologist Stacey Stevens by an urgent call for volunteer searchers, Bowditch finds his physical limits tested when he’s teamed up with beekeeper Bob “Nonstop” Nissen, an ex-con who no longer needs meth to keep pushing himself day and night, and his emotional loyalties tugged every which way when Stacey herself joins him in the search. Starting with the last people to see Baby Ruth and Naomi Walks alive, the Warden Service, the state police, and the FBI combine in rare harmony, methodically narrowing down the area they must search. All this effort comes too late for Baby Ruth and Naomi Walks, who at length are found dead on Chairback Mountain, not far from where they were last seen. Along the way, Bowditch tangles with a pair of newlyweds honeymooning along the A.T.; the bouffant-haired Rev. Mott, the hikers’ camera-ready minister; the hydra-headed Dow family, who never met a neighbor they couldn’t bully into submission; and a spectral general-store clerk who tells him, “There are nights when the wolves are silent and only the moon howls.” They’re all worth your time, but most of them are only red herrings whose underdeveloped stories go nowhere, and the monster responsible for the deaths, and eventually for Stacey’s disappearance, seems to have been cast almost as an afterthought.
As scenically evocative as Bowditch’s first four cases but not nearly as dense, conclusive, or interesting.Pub Date: June 16, 2015
ISBN: 978-1-250-06369-4
Page Count: 320
Publisher: Minotaur
Review Posted Online: March 30, 2015
Kirkus Reviews Issue: April 15, 2015
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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