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
Though the pace lags at times, the characters are richly detailed and true to life, and the ending is sure to please fans.
A Seattle homicide detective is thrust back into a painfully personal case when the remains of her 20-years-vanished younger sister are uncovered in a shallow grave near Cedar Grove, the Washington mountain town where they grew up.
Forty-two-year-old Tracy Crosswhite has long felt responsible for what happened the night her goofy, fun-loving sister, Sarah, disappeared. Former lawyer Dugoni (The Conviction, 2012, etc.) retells the events of that evening in flashback, recounting how, upon leaving a shooting championship, Tracy asked Sarah to drive her truck back to Cedar Grove during a storm so Tracy and her boyfriend could make it to their romantic dinner reservation. The next morning, the empty truck was discovered on a county road with Sarah nowhere to be found, and her disappearance turned both the Crosswhite family and the town itself upside down. As Tracy's engagement fell apart and her parents lost themselves to grief, Tracy found herself doubting the legality of the trial that eventually put local oddball Edmund House in prison for Sarah's apparent murder. Now, with the fresh evidence of her sister's remains in her arsenal, Tracy seizes the opportunity to reinvestigate Sarah's fate—and the possible conspiracy she believes led a man to get convicted for a crime he didn't commit. The majority of the book centers on Tracy's quest to uncover the truth and secure a new trial for House. Though the book is well-written and its classic premise is sure to absorb legal-thriller fans, it grows a bit plodding at times, with too many pages dedicated to House's retrial.
Though the pace lags at times, the characters are richly detailed and true to life, and the ending is sure to please fans.Pub Date: Nov. 1, 2014
ISBN: 978-1-4778-2557-0
Page Count: 424
Publisher: Thomas & Mercer
Review Posted Online: Sept. 30, 2014
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Oct. 15, 2014
The book ends on a cliffhanger worthy of Harry Potter, and Rowling’s readers will eagerly await the next installment.
J.K. Rowling continues her investigation of the dark side—this time giving us three gruesomely twisted suspects—in her latest pseudonymous mystery.
Robin Ellacott first showed up at hard-living private eye Cormoran Strike’s office as a temp, but by the end of their second big case (The Silkworm, 2014), she’d become indispensable as a fellow investigator. As this third book opens, she’s arriving at work off Charing Cross Road and accepts a package from a deliveryman, thinking it’s a shipment of favors for her upcoming wedding to Matthew, the jealous fiance who disapproves of her job. When she opens it, though, she’s horrified to find a woman’s leg. Someone seems to be using Robin to get to her boss, who's missing a leg himself, having lost it in an explosion in Afghanistan. Strike can think of four men, right off the top of his head, who would be capable of such a horrific thing: the stepfather he thinks killed his mother with a heroin overdose; a famous mobster; and two sick bastards he tangled with when he was an Army investigator. The police immediately go after the mobster, who, on second thought, Strike finds an unlikely culprit—so he and Robin set to work tracking down the other three. Rowling is, as always, an unflinching chronicler of evil, interspersing chapters told from the perspective of the carefully unnamed perpetrator—a serial killer with a penchant for keeping “souvenirs” from his victims’ bodies and an unhealthy obsession with Strike—as he follows Robin around London, waiting for her to get distracted just long enough for him to kill her, too. Robin and Strike’s relationship continues to be the best part of the series, though perhaps it’s too easy to dislike Matthew; readers will be cheering when Robin breaks off their engagement, but of course it won’t be that easy to get rid of him. The story has its longueurs, and if Galbraith weren’t actually Rowling, an editor might have told him to trim a bit, especially once Strike and Robin close in on their three suspects and start conducting repetitive stakeouts (and especially since the two who aren’t Strike’s former stepfather are hard to keep straight).
The book ends on a cliffhanger worthy of Harry Potter, and Rowling’s readers will eagerly await the next installment.Pub Date: Oct. 20, 2015
ISBN: 978-0-316-34993-2
Page Count: 512
Publisher: Mulholland Books/Little, Brown
Review Posted Online: Oct. 17, 2015
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Nov. 1, 2015
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