As for the identity of the powers behind the dozen executions: No matter who you guess, you’ll be right.
Are Liberia and its neighbors about to go up in flames? Call freelance fixer Bruce Medway.
Though no job is too tough for Medway (Instruments of Darkness, not reviewed), he isn’t much of an advertisement for multitasking. When half-caste porn producer Fat Paul agrees to pay him $4,000 to drop off a video to an Ivory Coast recipient who’ll trust only a white man, the transfer ends in a bloodbath. When Syrian millionaire B.B., who has Medway on retainer, wants him to travel to Korhogo to fire Kurt Nielsen, the Dane who’s running his sheanut operation, somebody gets to Nielsen first and lays him off permanently. And when Martin Fall, head of a security firm back in England, asks him to keep an eye on diamond scion Ronald Collins, who’s come to Africa for a big buy, the boy gets kidnapped by gun-toting thugs. Clearly all three jobs are connected to the murder of James Wilson, aide to the President of Liberia who lost his job when his boss lost his head last month. But finding out just how they’re connected is part of the fun of this darkly tangled thriller from highly regarded Wilson (The Blind Man of Seville, 2003,, etc.)—along with listening to Medway’s wisecracks, which carry real authority because they’re delivered without a trace of preening self-regard.
As for the identity of the powers behind the dozen executions: No matter who you guess, you’ll be right.Pub Date: Nov. 1, 2003
ISBN: 0-15-601119-0
Page Count: 336
Publisher: Harvest/Houghton Mifflin Harcourt
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 15, 2003
The investigation is ill-paced, with repetitive rounds of questioning suddenly yielding climactic revelations for no good...
’Tis the week before Christmas, and inquiry agent William Monk’s ex-boss Supt. Runcorn, having decided to get as far away from his depressing London beat as possible, runs into a brutal murder on an isolated Welsh isle.
Anglesey would be a perfect setting for the midwinter holidays if it weren’t so bleak and lonely, and if Supt. Runcorn had someone he loved to celebrate with, and if it weren’t the current home to Melisande Ewart, who antagonized her brother, John Barclay, by identifying the victim and testifying against the killer in one of Runcorn’s cases. And, of course, if it weren’t for the sudden death of Olivia Costain, the vicar’s sister, sensitive and lively but widely accounted a bit of a child. Now the child, stabbed in the stomach, will never grow old. Sgt. Warner, the local constable, is clearly out past his depth, and Melisande’s fiancé Sir Alan Faraday, when he arrives from Caernarfon to take charge of the case, seems so intent on soothing troubled waters that he ignores the one fact clear to Runcorn from the beginning: that Olivia knew her killer and felt comfortable with him.
The investigation is ill-paced, with repetitive rounds of questioning suddenly yielding climactic revelations for no good reason, and the murderer is negligible. Perry’s fifth seasonal bouquet (A Christmas Secret, 2006, etc.) works best as a study of Runcorn’s lower-class inhibitions and how he learns to deal with them.Pub Date: Oct. 30, 2007
ISBN: 978-0-345-48582-3
Page Count: 208
Publisher: Ballantine
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 1, 2007
Smith comes out swinging and never lets up in her knockout debut novel. It seems a misnomer to label this a detective story, since the mysteries unraveled by FBI agent Ana Grey are in another league entirely—as is Grey herself. She delves into a case involving Violeta Alvarado, a woman who may or may not have been her distant cousin. (Grey knows little about her Central American father's side of the family, and her discoveries about her past—in particular her changing view of the retired police officer grandfather who raised her—are gripping.) Alvarado has been gunned down, leaving behind two small children; almost simultaneously, aging starlet Jayne Mason, recently sprung from Betty Ford, accuses Alvarado's former employer, a physician, of addicting her to prescription drugs. Smith has her finger on the pulse of modern American life here, fictionally capturing numerous societal trends with great style. The doctor under investigation lives in a wealthy section of Santa Monica north of Montana Avenue, ``the land of the newly rich where noontime joggers pass beneath scarlet-tipped coral trees on a wide grassy meridian.'' This is the same area where Grey lived with her grandfather during the early years of her life, and where their modest home is now for sale at $875,000. In further exploration of the breach between rich and poor, Grey is taken on a joy ride by Jayne Mason and momentarily falls under the celebrity's spell; she also goes on an outing to a bot†nica with the woman caring for Alvarado's children and receives mystical instructions on how to find peace. These episodes carry no whiff of sociological discourse; they just happen to be part of a terrific story. Even a plot line involving frustrated love that threads through the other narratives has impact and originality. Transcends all conventions. (First printing of 125,000; Literary Guild main selection)
Pub Date: Sept. 12, 1994
ISBN: 0-679-43197-7
Page Count: 304
Publisher: Knopf
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 15, 1994
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