An exhausting major treatise on just about everything, minoring as a mystery-romance.
A cultural discourse masquerading as a thriller.
In 2002, a legal assistant's satchel containing an envelope belonging to her employer is stolen on a train in Marseille. In Paris, she discloses the theft to boss Andrew Livingston, after which the two discuss at length U.S. hiring practices, the state of affairs in Israel and the sovereignty of nations. A man with an Italian accent calls to say he has the satchel. After one of the most tedious interviews in employment history, Livingston hires James McCue as an interpreter/chauffeur, noting that he is "an American who acted and reasoned more like a Frenchman." 'James' job is to drive Melvin Metzelbaum, an importer of leather goods, to Marseille to meet Antonio Bolini, possessor of the missing envelope. Antonio is murdered and Melvin is suspected, but the French police choose to interrogate James, who discusses his favorite presidents, why he never married, Descartes, the Italian Mafia and the size of testicles of sex offenders. You see, there are these sheets of paper that might contain data in code, but then again it might be color arrangements for ladies' shoes. FBI agent Joseph Duffy's arrival in Paris is followed by a 50-plus-page chapter touching on universal suffrage, North Korea, J. Edgar Hoover, Machine Gun Kelly, the Kennedy family, Marilyn Monroe, Free Masons, I Love Lucy, the Rambo movies and, of course, Daniel Patrick Moynihan. Andrew, James and Joseph, accompanied by Deborah Winger (by book’s end, she is inexplicably "Debra") travel to Romania, affording time to reflect on Colin Powell, the mixing of canine breeds, Ghandi and Gomer Pyle. Deborah and James McCue begin a short-lived affair–he's got a problem with premature ejaculation and there's herpes on his left butt cheek–but, hey, this could be love. The unanswered question is why it takes over 700 pages for essentially a 20-page smuggling plot.
An exhausting major treatise on just about everything, minoring as a mystery-romance.Pub Date: Jan. 4, 2006
ISBN: 978-1425912499
Page Count: -
Publisher: N/A
Review Posted Online: May 23, 2010
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
Forget about solving all these crimes; the signal triumph here is (spoiler) the heroine’s survival.
Another sweltering month in Charlotte, another boatload of mysteries past and present for overworked, overstressed forensic anthropologist Temperance Brennan.
A week after the night she chases but fails to catch a mysterious trespasser outside her town house, some unknown party texts Tempe four images of a corpse that looks as if it’s been chewed by wild hogs, because it has been. Showboat Medical Examiner Margot Heavner makes it clear that, breaking with her department’s earlier practice (The Bone Collection, 2016, etc.), she has no intention of calling in Tempe as a consultant and promptly identifies the faceless body herself as that of a young Asian man. Nettled by several errors in Heavner’s analysis, and even more by her willingness to share the gory details at a press conference, Tempe launches her own investigation, which is not so much off the books as against the books. Heavner isn’t exactly mollified when Tempe, aided by retired police detective Skinny Slidell and a host of experts, puts a name to the dead man. But the hints of other crimes Tempe’s identification uncovers, particularly crimes against children, spur her on to redouble her efforts despite the new M.E.’s splenetic outbursts. Before he died, it seems, Felix Vodyanov was linked to a passenger ferry that sank in 1994, an even earlier U.S. government project to research biological agents that could control human behavior, the hinky spiritual retreat Sparkling Waters, the dark web site DeepUnder, and the disappearances of at least four schoolchildren, two of whom have also turned up dead. And why on earth was Vodyanov carrying Tempe’s own contact information? The mounting evidence of ever more and ever worse skulduggery will pull Tempe deeper and deeper down what even she sees as a rabbit hole before she confronts a ringleader implicated in “Drugs. Fraud. Breaking and entering. Arson. Kidnapping. How does attempted murder sound?”
Forget about solving all these crimes; the signal triumph here is (spoiler) the heroine’s survival.Pub Date: March 17, 2020
ISBN: 978-1-9821-3888-2
Page Count: 352
Publisher: Scribner
Review Posted Online: Dec. 22, 2019
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 15, 2020
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
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