Fifteen more rounds of violent farce for sometime–repo man Nick Reid.
Since splitting the $300,000 they lifted from a meth king at the end of Ranchero (2011), Nick and his partner, Desmond, have naturally been looking for investments that are safe and lucrative. Now, Larry Carothers, the ex-con brother of Desmond’s ex-girlfriend Shawnica, comes to them with an investment opportunity that promises to be neither. Larry, who’s christened himself Beluga LaMonte, knows where there’s a truckload of stolen Michelin tires just begging to be hijacked and resold. With an investment of $50,000—all right, $30,000—he’ll be ready to roll. Predictably, the folks who originally stole the tires have grown possessive about them. Lucas Shambrough, the genteel citizen behind the theft, puts on such highfalutin airs that he obviously thinks he belongs in another book. Instead of meting out violent retribution against Beluga and his backers, he’s content to send out his secret weapon: a female assassin named Mako, or Isis, or Alice Marie Fennick, costumed as a ninja schoolgirl, who leaves Beluga’s prison buddy Skeeter in a world of hurt and aims to spread the pain wherever she can. Nor can Nick and Desmond count on much help from the local law, since Choctaw/African-American cop Tula Raintree mainly seems interested in slapping the cuffs on Nick every chance she gets. As Nick, chained in a basement awaiting the ninja’s ministrations, sagely reflects, “It was hard at that point to imagine that this had all started because of some tires.”
Gavin updates the good-old-boy charm of the Smokey and the Bandit movie series but adds some sharp narration by a hero who’s still plenty dumb enough to get into some seriously funny trouble.Pub Date: Nov. 6, 2012
ISBN: 978-1-250-01522-8
Page Count: 304
Publisher: Minotaur
Review Posted Online: Sept. 12, 2012
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Oct. 1, 2012
Categories: GENERAL MYSTERY & DETECTIVE | MYSTERY & DETECTIVE
Did you like this book?
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
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. 23, 2019
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 15, 2020
Did you like this book?
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 22, 2015
Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 15, 2015
Categories: GENERAL MYSTERY & DETECTIVE | MYSTERY & DETECTIVE
Did you like this book?
© Copyright 2023 Kirkus Media LLC. All Rights Reserved.
Follow
We can’t wait for you to join Kirkus!
It’s free and takes less than 10 seconds!
Already have an account? Log in.
OR
Sign in with GoogleTrouble signing in? Retrieve credentials.
Welcome Back!
OR
Sign in with GoogleTrouble signing in? Retrieve credentials.
