Pecora is no Raymond Chandler and Cody Thomas is no Philip Marlowe, but this debut detective novel bodes well for Pecora’s...
In this mystery novel, Cody Thomas, private eye, tries to find the real murderer and clear his accused wife, with not a moment to lose.
Pecora, a first-time mystery writer, contrives an effective noir scene to open his story of death and deception. Cody, ex-cop and now private detective, has bugged an adjoining room in a sleazy hotel and is listening in the dark, in the small hours. The sounds—giggling, bed creaking, passionate moaning—indicate an assignation. Then he hears drunken snoring and gets just a glimpse of a young woman walking away down the corridor. No big deal, until the creep, Samuel Hollowell, is found dead the next morning, tied naked to the bed. Cody turns the tape over to his old partner, Lt. Andy Perone, whom he knows to be honest and who happens to be heading up the investigation. The hunt is on—and, it seems, soon over: Cody’s wife, Joanna, confesses to him that she was the mystery woman at the hotel. Now, as the bodies pile up—someone is knocking off those who might spell trouble—Cody has to solve the case to clear his stir-crazy wife amid well-founded marital insecurity. The well-handled tension serves as the narrative’s strongest dynamic, even though Joanna’s reason for being in the hotel room seems rather forced. When Cody and his lawyer manage to get Joanna released on bond, there’s another killing, and Joanna gets hauled back in. Perhaps Joanna is innocent after all, but then who’s the real killer? Pecora admirably weaves the twisty plot that’s as much about Cody’s overwhelming doubt—of his wife’s fidelity, of a police department that he knows is corruptible—as it is about simply solving the murders. Description and dialogue are often overwrought or stiff, though, but the conclusion is well-handled.
Pecora is no Raymond Chandler and Cody Thomas is no Philip Marlowe, but this debut detective novel bodes well for Pecora’s future.Pub Date: June 28, 2012
ISBN: 978-1466944268
Page Count: 284
Publisher: Trafford
Review Posted Online: Sept. 25, 2012
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
A suspenseful, professional-grade north country procedural whose heroine, a deft mix of compassion and attitude, would be...
Box takes another break from his highly successful Joe Pickett series (Stone Cold, 2014, etc.) for a stand-alone about a police detective, a developmentally delayed boy, and a package everyone in North Dakota wants to grab.
Cassandra Dewell can’t leave Montana’s Lewis and Clark County fast enough for her new job as chief investigator for Jon Kirkbride, sheriff of Bakken County. She leaves behind no memories worth keeping: her husband is dead, her boss has made no bones about disliking her, and she’s looking forward to new responsibilities and the higher salary underwritten by North Dakota’s sudden oil boom. But Bakken County has its own issues. For one thing, it’s cold—a whole lot colder than the coldest weather Cassie’s ever imagined. For another, the job she turns out to have been hired for—leading an investigation her new boss doesn’t feel he can entrust to his own force—makes her queasy. The biggest problem, though, is one she doesn’t know about until it slaps her in the face. A fatal car accident that was anything but accidental has jarred loose a stash of methamphetamines and cash that’s become the center of a battle between the Sons of Freedom, Bakken County’s traditional drug sellers, and MS-13, the Salvadorian upstarts who are muscling in on their territory. It’s a setup that leaves scant room for law enforcement officers or for Kyle Westergaard, the 12-year-old paperboy damaged since birth by fetal alcohol syndrome, who’s walked away from the wreck with a prize all too many people would kill for.
A suspenseful, professional-grade north country procedural whose heroine, a deft mix of compassion and attitude, would be welcome to return and tie up the gaping loose end Box leaves. The unrelenting cold makes this the perfect beach read.Pub Date: July 28, 2015
ISBN: 978-0-312-58321-7
Page Count: 272
Publisher: Minotaur
Review Posted Online: April 21, 2015
Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 15, 2015
Proficient but eminently predictable. Amid all the time shifts and embedded backstories, the most surprising feature is how...
A convicted killer’s list of five people he wants dead runs the gamut from the wife he’s already had murdered to franchise heroine Ali Reynolds.
Back in the day, women came from all over to consult Santa Clarita fertility specialist Dr. Edward Gilchrist. Many of them left his care happily pregnant, never dreaming that the father of the babies they carried was none other than the physician himself, who donated his own sperm rather than that of the handsome, athletic, disease-free men pictured in his scrapbook. When Alexandra Munsey’s son, Evan, is laid low by the kidney disease he’s inherited from his biological father and she returns to Gilchrist in search of the donor’s medical records, the roof begins to fall in on him. By the time it’s done falling, he’s serving a life sentence in Folsom Prison for commissioning the death of his wife, Dawn, the former nurse and sometime egg donor who’d turned on him. With nothing left to lose, Gilchrist tattoos himself with the initials of five people he blames for his fall: Dawn; Leo Manuel Aurelio, the hit man he’d hired to dispose of her; Kaitlyn Todd, the nurse/receptionist who took Dawn’s place; Alex Munsey, whose search for records upset his apple cart; and Ali Reynolds, the TV reporter who’d helped put Alex in touch with the dozen other women who formed the Progeny Project because their children looked just like hers. No matter that Ali’s been out of both California and the news business for years; Gilchrist and his enablers know that revenge can’t possibly be served too cold. Wonder how far down that list they’ll get before Ali, aided once more by Frigg, the methodical but loose-cannon AI first introduced in Duel to the Death (2018), turns on them?
Proficient but eminently predictable. Amid all the time shifts and embedded backstories, the most surprising feature is how little the boundary-challenged AI, who gets into the case more or less inadvertently, differs from your standard human sidekick with issues.Pub Date: April 2, 2019
ISBN: 978-1-5011-5101-9
Page Count: 352
Publisher: Gallery Books/Simon & Schuster
Review Posted Online: Feb. 18, 2019
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 1, 2019
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