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DANGEROUS CARGO

The investigator’s second outing is even more muscular than his debut, as Rowson edges her detective puzzles ever closer to...

Ex-commando Art Marvik (Silent Running, 2015) tracks down the killer of a man who died twice.

DNA evidence shows that the body washed up on the Isle of Wight belonged to Bradley Pulford, who had worked for fishermen Adam and Matthew Killbeck before vanishing in 1990 . But according to Detective Superintendent Philip Crowder of the National Intelligence Marine Squad, Pulford died in Singapore in 1959 in an accident aboard the freighter Leonora. So Crowder sends Marvik, along with fellow former Marine Shaun Strathen, to investigate the connection between the Killbecks, a Dorset fishing family, and a seaman killed in Asia. The trail is immediately complicated by Sarah Redburn, who’s looking for her father, Oscar, a marine archaeologist who disappeared from the Dorset coast in 1979 while looking for fossils. A picture shows Oscar with a group of students rallying in support of a local dockworkers’ strike—a group that includes Bradley Pulford. When Sarah is killed the morning after meeting Marvik, his antennae begin to quiver. And when Sarah’s roommate, actress Bryony Darrow, is burned out of her house on London’s Eel Pie Island, the ex-Marine goes full-throttle against a gang of villains as ruthless as they are deadly.

The investigator’s second outing is even more muscular than his debut, as Rowson edges her detective puzzles ever closer to thriller territory.

Pub Date: Sept. 1, 2016

ISBN: 978-0-7278-8626-2

Page Count: 224

Publisher: Severn House

Review Posted Online: June 18, 2016

Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 1, 2016

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Awards & Accolades

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  • Kirkus Reviews'
    Best Books Of 2015


  • New York Times Bestseller

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PRETTY GIRLS

Slaughter (Cop Town, 2014, etc.) is so uncompromising in following her blood trails to the darkest places imaginable that...

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  • Kirkus Reviews'
    Best Books Of 2015


  • New York Times Bestseller

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

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LABYRINTH

Greed, love, and extrasensory abilities combine in two middling mysteries.

Coulter’s treasured FBI agents take on two cases marked by danger and personal involvement.

Dillon Savitch and his wife, Lacey Sherlock, have special abilities that have served them well in law enforcement (Paradox, 2018, etc.). But that doesn't prevent Sherlock’s car from hitting a running man after having been struck by a speeding SUV that runs a red light. The runner, though clearly injured, continues on his way and disappears. Not so the SUV driver, a security engineer for the Bexholt Group, which has ties to government agencies. Sherlock’s own concussion causes memory loss so severe that she doesn’t recognize Savitch or remember their son, Sean. The whole incident seems more suspicious when a blood test from the splatter of the man Sherlock hit reveals that he’s Justice Cummings, an analyst for the CIA. The agency’s refusal to cooperate makes Savitch certain that Bexholt is involved in a deep-laid plot. Meanwhile, Special Agent Griffin Hammersmith is visiting friends who run a cafe in the touristy Virginia town of Gaffers Ridge. Hammersmith, who has psychic abilities, is taken aback when he hears in his mind a woman’s cry for help. Reporter Carson DeSilva, who came to the area to interview a Nobel Prize winner, also has psychic abilities, and she overhears the thoughts of Rafer Bodine, a young man who has apparently kidnapped and possibly murdered three teenage girls. Unluckily, she blurts out her thoughts, and she’s snatched and tied up in a cellar by Bodine. Bodine may be a killer, but he’s also the nephew of the sheriff and the son of the local bigwig. So the sheriff arrests Hammersmith and refuses to accept his FBI credentials. Bodine's mother has psychic powers strong enough to kill, but she meets her match in Hammersmith, DeSilva, Savitch, and Sherlock.

Greed, love, and extrasensory abilities combine in two middling mysteries.

Pub Date: July 30, 2019

ISBN: 978-1-5011-9365-1

Page Count: 512

Publisher: Simon & Schuster

Review Posted Online: June 30, 2019

Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 15, 2019

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