A potboiler with flawless rhythm and a protagonist who’s practically begging for his own series.
In this debut thriller, a slain family is only the beginning for a group of killers that ultimately sets its sights on the investigating detectives.
Retired detective Nicholas Pearce, now working as a police consultant, is well-known for his impeccable hunches. He attributes two murder scenes, both involving families and a surviving member, to the same killer—or is it killers? It seems that someone may be recruiting orphans for fiendish purposes. Apparently, Nick’s hunches are spot-on, as masked men brandishing AK-47s start gunning for the police. Maroney’s novel is two stories in one: a rousing procedural and a solid action story. The former is the better of the two, with an investigation that unfolds at an unrelenting pace, featuring a dumped body that leads police to the murder site, where they find the left-alive daughter, followed by a second family killed and a break in the case. Nick, who has degrees in psychology and criminal justice, meticulously picks apart the crime scenes. He’s a winsome character whose analytical proficiency is constantly on display, though his insistence on playing down his skills—“I’m just lucky sometimes,” he muses—borders on self-depreciation. After an ensnared criminal confirms some of Nick’s theories and answers a few lingering questions, the latter part of the novel centers on the Nick finding the killers while simultaneously dodging apparent hits. Addie, a federal agent and a love interest of Nick’s, is introduced a little late in the novel, but she’s instantly likable with her sturdy demeanor and ability to take Nick’s cynicism in stride: When he suggests that she’s not his type because she’s “too butch,” Addie calmly reminds him that she’s armed. What also sets Maroney’s book apart is Nick’s investigative approach: He tries to understand the killers and their motives without condemning what they’re doing. It’s an uncommon way to scrutinize a crime scene and one that feels unspoiled by cliché.
A potboiler with flawless rhythm and a protagonist who’s practically begging for his own series.Pub Date: May 1, 2012
ISBN: 978-1469198590
Page Count: 288
Publisher: Xlibris
Review Posted Online: June 7, 2013
Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 1, 2013
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
Forget about solving all these crimes; the signal triumph here is (spoiler) the heroine’s survival.
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. 22, 2019
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 15, 2020
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
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