A taut, timely, terrific thriller.
A freshly minted police detective doesn’t believe a man died of natural causes, and his investigation leads all the way to Russia.
In Meredith’s fast-paced thriller, San Francisco homicide detective Steve Nguyen gets his first solo assignment: investigate the death of 31-year-old Luke Miller, an accountant at The Glass Foundation. Established by Julian Glass, an Eastern European transplant with ties to the United States Senate, the foundation supports groups focusing on education, health, and the environment. Steve’s news of Luke’s suspicious death—no forced entry, drugs, or trauma—shocks the foundation’s human resources head, Jennifer Krauss. Although 10 years older than Luke, the two were close friends. Jenn marveled at Luke’s attention to detail, saying he could find “things, little things, buried deep in an audit.” Unknown to anyone except Executive Director Roger Dayton, Luke also found one big thing: a file detailing questionable payments from international companies. Roger, who has ties to Russia, told his Russian contact that Luke discovered the file. The Russian arranged for the accountant’s elimination by an assassin and suggested that Luke may have told Jenn about his discovery. Forget #MeToo: Roger woos his underling to find out. He also helps in bugging her apartment and phone, allowing the Russians to hear what Steve tells her about the investigation’s progress. Meanwhile, Jenn becomes intrigued with Steve. She asks his cousin Tina—a smart-mouthed lawyer—for Steve’s backstory and learns “he’s addled with self-doubt.” Indeed, the detective’s sessions with his therapist add depth to the character and make the book more than a thriller, albeit an exciting one. Meredith’s characters are intriguing, fresh, and flawed. For example, Tina wears her “most revealing blouses to police interrogations. She’d use anything to her advantage, including her well-proportioned figure.” Steve—a Vietnamese American Stanford Law dropout and Bruce Lee look-alike, per Tina—graduated from the University of California at Berkeley at the age of 20. But he now has trouble fitting in as a policeman—“a career not wholly embraced” by his family. The plot, laced with deception and betrayal, seems frighteningly possible. Women and minorities have significant roles; the dialogue is smart; and the descriptions are strong: “It was noon, and the squad room smelled like a food court.”
A taut, timely, terrific thriller.Pub Date: Oct. 25, 2022
ISBN: 978-1-60452-191-7
Page Count: 390
Publisher: BluewaterPress LLC
Review Posted Online: March 25, 2022
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
Fast-moving excitement with a satisfying finish.
The feds must protect an accused criminal and an orphaned girl.
Maybe you’ve met him before as protagonist of The 6:20 Man (2022): Ex-Army Ranger Travis Devine, who’d had the dubious fortune to tangle with “the girl on the train,” is now assigned by his homeland security boss to protect Danny Glass, who's awaiting trial on multiple RICO charges in Washington state. Devine has what it takes: He “was a closer, snooper, fixer, investigator,” and, when necessary, a killer. These skills are on full display as the deaths of three key witnesses grind justice to a temporary halt. Glass has a 12-year-old niece, Betsy Odom, and each is the other’s only living relative—her parents recently died of an apparent drug overdose. The FBI has temporary guardianship of Betsy, who's a handful. She tells Travis that though she’s not yet 13, she's 28 in “life-shit years.” The financially well-heeled Glass wants to be her legal guardian with an eye to eventual adoption, but what are his real motives? And what happens to her if he's convicted? Meanwhile, Betsy insists that her parents never touched drugs, and she begs Travis to find out how they really died. This becomes part of a mission that oozes danger. The small town of Ricketts has a woman mayor who’s full of charm on the surface, but deeply corrupt and deadly when crossed. She may be linked to a subversive group called "12/24/65," as in 1865, when the Ku Klux Klan beast was born. Blood flows, bombs explode, and people perish, both good guys and not-so-good guys. Readers might ponder why in fiction as well as in life, it sometimes seems necessary for many to die so one may live. And what about the girl on the train? She's not necessary to the plot, but she's a fun addition as she pops in and out of the pages, occasionally leaving notes for Travis. Maybe she still wants him dead.
Fast-moving excitement with a satisfying finish.Pub Date: Nov. 12, 2024
ISBN: 9781538757901
Page Count: 432
Publisher: Grand Central Publishing
Review Posted Online: Sept. 14, 2024
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Oct. 15, 2024
One of those rare triple-deckers that’s actually worth every page, every complication, every bead of sweat.
A routine break-in at the home of Sûreté homicide chief Armand Gamache leads slowly but surely to the revelation of a potentially calamitous threat to all Québec.
At first it seems as if nothing at all triggered the burglar alarm at Gamache’s home in Three Pines; it was literally a false alarm. It’s not till he receives a package containing his summer jacket that Gamache realizes someone really did get into his house, choosing to steal exactly this one item and return it with a cryptic note referring to “some malady…water” and “Angelica stems.” Having already refused to meet with Jeanne Caron, chief of staff to Marcus Lauzon, a powerful politician who’s already taken vengeance on Gamache and his family for not expunging his child’s criminal record, Gamache now agrees to meet with Charles Langlois, a marine biologist with ties to Caron who confesses to a leading role in stealing Gamache’s jacket. Their meeting ends inconclusively for Gamache, who’s convinced that Langlois is hiding something weighty, and all too conclusively for Langlois, who’s killed by a hit-and-run driver as he leaves. The news that Langlois had been investigating a water supply near the abbey of Saint-Gilbert-Entre-les-Loups sends Gamache scurrying off to the abbey, where the plot steadily thickens until he’s led to ask how “an old recipe for Chartreuse” can possibly be connected to “a terrorist plot to poison Québec’s drinking water.” That’s a great question, and answering it will take the second half of this story, which spins ever more intricate connections among leading players that become deeply unsettling.
One of those rare triple-deckers that’s actually worth every page, every complication, every bead of sweat.Pub Date: Oct. 29, 2024
ISBN: 9781250328137
Page Count: 432
Publisher: Minotaur
Review Posted Online: July 19, 2024
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 15, 2024
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