Heredia is an iconic figure in Chilean crime fiction, the subject of graphic novels and a TV series, and one hopes his U.S....
The first of Chilean crime novelist Eterovic's books to be translated into English features a hard-nosed PI named Heredia investigating a crime whose roots lie in the political kidnappings and torture of the Pinochet regime four decades ago.
In outline, this is straight-down-the-line hard-boiled fiction. Heredia lives in downtown Santiago and close to the bone, using his office as a place to flop; he's tough, world-weary, a gambler and a habitué of rough, run-down bars and clubs (like the cafes con piernas, "coffee shops with legs")...but also bookish. He scorns technology like cellphones and computers, and he speaks in an edgy banter lifted straight from Hammett and Chandler. In some ways the case he investigates here, too, is straightforward, even predictable: Germán Reyes, a lumberyard employee, has been murdered, and though the (minimal) evidence in the case doesn't support the theory at all, the police have declared the death a botched robbery to get it off the books. What's most conspicuously unusual here, for an American reader, is the setting—Chile about 30 years after the Pinochet regime—and Eterovic makes impressive use of it. Reyes was held and tortured by the infamous intelligence services at Villa Grimaldi, and he has in recent years been working with a group trying to excavate that little-spoken-of past and identify, shame, and prosecute those who, often under aliases, took part in arresting, tormenting, and in many cases murdering their fellow citizens—and then were allowed to resume or remake their bourgeois lives. Heredia immediately sees where his investigation is headed and doggedly—with the help of friends including a news vendor, an independent-minded girlfriend, and an enforcer who's auditioning for a partnership with Heredia—pursues the snake into its many holes. The surprise is the extent to which, despite its lack of big surprises, the book nevertheless works: Eterovic constructs an intricate plot peopled with dozens of characters, and he unravels the snarls patiently and often stylishly. The star here is contemporary Chile as a classic noir setting, not unlike gilded-but-corrupt LA in the 1930s: a society built on nested lies and dissimulations that many people would just as soon not expose.
Heredia is an iconic figure in Chilean crime fiction, the subject of graphic novels and a TV series, and one hopes his U.S. debut will be followed by many more outings.Pub Date: Dec. 1, 2017
ISBN: 978-1-5420-4691-6
Page Count: 270
Publisher: Amazon Crossing
Review Posted Online: Sept. 19, 2017
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Oct. 1, 2017
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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