As usual, Daniel (Corrupted Memory, 2015, etc.) is more than generous with the violence, guilt, tweets, craft brews, and...
A child’s disappearance triggers a high-stakes mob turf war that Boston programmer Aloysius Tucker can only wish he had no part of.
As part of his Christmas celebration with his cousin Sal Rizzo, head of the city’s Mafia, Tucker has bought Sal’s 9-year-old daughter, Maria, a sled and taken her out on Boston Common to give it a try. Big mistake. While he’s distracted talking to Sal, who appears out of nowhere commanding him to take Maria and run, someone in a Bruins jacket leads the little girl into a Lincoln and drives away. The trademark jacket and the lack of any struggle suggest that the abductor is a member of Sal’s crew, perhaps his friend Joey Pupo, but before Sal can look into it, he’s arrested for the murder of his wife, Sophia, who was strangled with Sal’s Christmas necktie right around the time Maria was taken away. The kidnapping, the murder, and especially the arrest act as powerful catalysts for a fight to the death over Sal’s territory. As Tucker’s partner and friend, former Mossad assassin Jael Navas, tells him, “all sides see you as an enemy”: Sal’s allies want to kill him for betraying Sal; his rivals want to kill him in order to grab Sal’s turf. Tucker’s enemies apparently include rival mobster Hugh Graxton, private-equity kingpin David Anderson, Tucker’s old friend Bobby Miller of the FBI, and maybe even the attractive women who keep coming on to him. Behind the high-fatality plot, however, is a shatteringly simple motive.
As usual, Daniel (Corrupted Memory, 2015, etc.) is more than generous with the violence, guilt, tweets, craft brews, and compassion.Pub Date: June 8, 2016
ISBN: 978-0-7387-4231-1
Page Count: 408
Publisher: Midnight Ink/Llewellyn
Review Posted Online: March 15, 2016
Kirkus Reviews Issue: April 1, 2016
A terrifying page-turner with the complexities of fatherhood at its core.
The serial killer who terrorized a small British town by kidnapping and murdering five little boys has been locked up for over a decade. So who could have taken 6-year-old Neil Spencer?
"The first forty-eight hours following a disappearance are the most crucial." And yet one of those hours has gone by the time Neil's separated parents realize he never made it from his father's house to his mother's, a short walk he took alone. One of the main investigators of the crime is DI Pete Willis, who cracked a similar case years back and has never quite recovered from it, especially since one of the missing boys was never found. Is there an accomplice still on the loose? As Willis and his colleagues comb the town for clues about the disappearance, a recently widowed novelist and his young son move into what they don't yet know is called "the scary house." Jake is a bright but isolated child who has relied heavily on an imaginary friend and a Packet of Special Things for comfort since he came home from school one day to find his mother's lifeless body at the foot of the stairs. This move is meant to be a much-needed fresh start for the grieving and bewildered father and son, but from the start nothing goes right. On Jake's first day at his new school, the other children draw him into discussion about the missing boy and the Whisper Man who took him. Soon enough, Jake hears whispering too. North's novel pits nasty men submerged in evil against decent men struggling to do good; several father-son pairs reflect the challenges and darker possibilities of this relationship, though plotlines involving female characters are a bit undeveloped.
A terrifying page-turner with the complexities of fatherhood at its core.Pub Date: Aug. 20, 2019
ISBN: 978-1-250-31799-5
Page Count: 368
Publisher: Celadon Books
Review Posted Online: May 26, 2019
Kirkus Reviews Issue: June 15, 2019
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
Middling for this fine series, which automatically makes it one of the season’s highlights.
Fired from his job as Game and Fish Warden after wrapping up his colorful sixth case (In Plain Sight, 2006), Joe Pickett returns to nab the perpetrator of the perfect crime.
According to his own confession, small-time lawyer Clay McCann, feeling bullied and insulted by four campers he encountered in Yellowstone Park, shot them dead. A ingenious technicality he’s discovered, however, prevents him from being tried and convicted. Wyoming Governor Spencer Rulon, a former prosecutor, can only slap McCann’s wrist, but he’s determined to figure out what Rick Hoening, one of the victims, meant by an email that hinted at secrets that could have a major impact on the state’s financial health. So he asks Joe, now working as foreman at his father-in-law’s ranch, to poke around the park while maintaining full deniability for the Governor. The situation stinks, but Joe’s so eager to get away from his wife’s poisonous mother and go back to his old job that he agrees, and in short order there’s a spate of new killings to deal with—some committed by McCann, some not. As usual, there’s little mystery about which of the sketchy suspects is behind the skullduggery. But, as usual, the central situation is so strong, the continuing characters so appealing and the spectacular landscape so lovingly evoked that it doesn’t matter.
Middling for this fine series, which automatically makes it one of the season’s highlights.Pub Date: May 10, 2007
ISBN: 0-399-15427-2
Page Count: 288
Publisher: Putnam
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 15, 2007
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