As usual, the characters are forgettable, the mystery perfunctory, and the solution unremarkable. But Goldsborough works a...
Nero Wolfe goes to work on behalf of the most unlikely person ever: Inspector Lionel T. Cramer, head of NYPD Homicide.
It’s not bad enough that Lester Pierce, executive director of the Good Government Group, has been gunned down in front of his Park Avenue co-op; since Pierce had been vocally critical of Cramer, the inspector’s put on administrative leave and replaced with Capt. George Rowcliff, Wolfe’s least favorite cop. It’s hard to believe that things could get worse, but they do. When Wolfe, who’d love to see Cramer, despite their differences over the years (Murder, Stage Left, 2017, etc.), back on the job, asks nonpareil operative Saul Panzer to make some discreet inquiries, they’re not discreet enough to keep Saul from getting beaten up by a pair of thugs who can’t believe this guy thought the Pierce killing could have been a mob hit. His dander up, Wolfe has his faithful legman, Archie Goodwin, make the rounds of the most likely suspects who aren’t mobbed-up: Pierce’s dry-eyed widow, Audra Kingston Pierce; their well-to-do children, Malcolm, Marianne, and Mark; Malcolm's and Mark’s wives; and Roland Marchbank and Laura Cordwell, both of whom had reason to believe they’d succeed Pierce as boss of Three–G. Long before a client willing to pay Wolfe emerges from the shadows, Cramer’s been spotted in a restaurant meeting with underworld kingpin Ralph Mars; it’s only a matter of time before news of the meeting gets out, sinking Cramer even deeper. The good news for longtime fans of Rex Stout’s corpulent detective is that Goldsborough’s Wolfe really does sound like Wolfe; the bad news is that many other characters—especially Archie, who spends most of his time on the phone with New York Gazette writer/editor Lon Cohen—sound like him, too.
As usual, the characters are forgettable, the mystery perfunctory, and the solution unremarkable. But Goldsborough works a nifty change on the climactic gathering of suspects for the big reveal that’s worth the price of admission all on its own.Pub Date: April 17, 2018
ISBN: 978-1-5040-4910-8
Page Count: 250
Publisher: Open Road Integrated Media
Review Posted Online: March 5, 2018
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 1, 2018
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
Proficient but eminently predictable. Amid all the time shifts and embedded backstories, the most surprising feature is how...
A convicted killer’s list of five people he wants dead runs the gamut from the wife he’s already had murdered to franchise heroine Ali Reynolds.
Back in the day, women came from all over to consult Santa Clarita fertility specialist Dr. Edward Gilchrist. Many of them left his care happily pregnant, never dreaming that the father of the babies they carried was none other than the physician himself, who donated his own sperm rather than that of the handsome, athletic, disease-free men pictured in his scrapbook. When Alexandra Munsey’s son, Evan, is laid low by the kidney disease he’s inherited from his biological father and she returns to Gilchrist in search of the donor’s medical records, the roof begins to fall in on him. By the time it’s done falling, he’s serving a life sentence in Folsom Prison for commissioning the death of his wife, Dawn, the former nurse and sometime egg donor who’d turned on him. With nothing left to lose, Gilchrist tattoos himself with the initials of five people he blames for his fall: Dawn; Leo Manuel Aurelio, the hit man he’d hired to dispose of her; Kaitlyn Todd, the nurse/receptionist who took Dawn’s place; Alex Munsey, whose search for records upset his apple cart; and Ali Reynolds, the TV reporter who’d helped put Alex in touch with the dozen other women who formed the Progeny Project because their children looked just like hers. No matter that Ali’s been out of both California and the news business for years; Gilchrist and his enablers know that revenge can’t possibly be served too cold. Wonder how far down that list they’ll get before Ali, aided once more by Frigg, the methodical but loose-cannon AI first introduced in Duel to the Death (2018), turns on them?
Proficient but eminently predictable. Amid all the time shifts and embedded backstories, the most surprising feature is how little the boundary-challenged AI, who gets into the case more or less inadvertently, differs from your standard human sidekick with issues.Pub Date: April 2, 2019
ISBN: 978-1-5011-5101-9
Page Count: 352
Publisher: Gallery Books/Simon & Schuster
Review Posted Online: Feb. 18, 2019
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 1, 2019
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