A savage, gloomy murder tale that captivates with graceful prose and relentless protagonists.
A former FBI agent investigating a string of killings, all affiliated with a particular church, uncovers dark secrets in this debut thriller.
U.S. authorities have linked two recent murders with similar M.O.s: a man in North Carolina with drill-puncture wounds and another in West Virginia whose body contained 35 10-inch wood screws. Retired fed Daniel Ficus enlists the help of ex-FBI agent Karen McIntyre because of the victims’ associations with Hillbourne Tabernacle Ministries. As it happens, there are quite a few more HTM members who have died within the last couple of years. Though cops haven’t deemed most of the deaths as homicides, Ficus, the chief of security for HTM, wants Karen to investigate them—and as quietly as possible. In a concurrent subplot, 9-year-old Clara Lino is living a bleak existence in Honduras. One day, her abusive prostitute mother sells Clara to a gringo. Some strangers take the girl to Casa Crystal, a reputed orphanage where she and other children are subjected to rape and general maltreatment. The deviants running the orphanage later ship Clara and the others to America, where their predicament, if anything, only worsens. Befriending some of her fellow captives, Clara soon looks for a means of escape. Meanwhile, in the course of her inquiry, Karen links yet another death to the rest, but one in which the victim may have hidden a rather repulsive pastime. As she inches closer to identifying the murderer, Karen suspects HTM is keeping secrets from her. When her life inevitably intersects with Clara’s, answers, however appalling, will come to light. The things that Clara endures makes Hulsman’s book anything but a breezy read. It is nevertheless thoroughly engaging, starting with the astonishing female protagonists. Tormented Clara, for one, copes with help from her grandfather’s love of Greek mythology; at one point, she sees herself as Persephone, remaining strong-willed against her captors (metaphorically Hades). Karen, for her part, has a curiously murky background, as her last federal case resulted in praise and a medal as well as her decision to quit the bureau. Violence in a story of child abuse is unsurprising, but in this case, it’s neither prolonged nor graphic. In fact, the author writes with a skilled, confident hand and a lyricism that assuages the narrative’s grimmer content. The ambience, for example, is somber but beautiful: “All along the reservoir’s edge, a hazy October sunrise doused the fall colors of the trees in a preternatural gleam.” Even more intense moments have a noted vibrancy: “All-consuming panic exploded into an almost liberating darkness as she passed out.” Although the killer’s name isn’t immediately known (despite opening with a murder from the criminal’s perspective), readers will likely decipher the mystery in little time. But this doesn’t diminish the impact of the tale, which is more invested in Clara’s survival and perseverance. Likewise, there are unanticipated shocks, such as what Karen finds inside a coin bank. The story ends with finality while leaving the fate of a character or two fairly open.
A savage, gloomy murder tale that captivates with graceful prose and relentless protagonists.Pub Date: April 2, 2018
ISBN: 978-1-984517-24-1
Page Count: 254
Publisher: Xlibris
Review Posted Online: Sept. 14, 2018
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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