A disturbing but intelligently crafted crime drama.
A New York prosecutor heads an investigation into the brutal murder of a child in this novel.
Hector Ruiz, a young boy in the Bronx addled with severe autism, is found savagely killed in his home—his neck is slit so deeply, he’s nearly decapitated. Bronx Assistant District Attorney Alex Greco catches the case, an especially disturbing one for him because he lost his own son, 3-year-old Jordan, also autistic. Alex never quite recovered from the tragedy, which ruined his marriage. Hector’s father, Norman, is an obvious suspect—coldly indifferent to his son, he has a history of wanton violence. In addition, he’s involved in a dangerous underworld of criminal activity that includes trafficking women and guns; the murder of his son could be a foe’s act of retribution for one of Norman’s countless sins. Norman’s brother-in-law, Oscar Carrera, is also a candidate for the crime: He suffers from debilitating mental illness and can become adrift in a fuguelike oblivion, losing track of days at a time. But as Alex digs deeper, he uncovers a much darker and more entangled web of iniquity that involves the sexual exploitation of children, a world chillingly described by Canaff (Copperhead Road, 2014). Meanwhile, Alex contemplates a bid for local public office but is haunted by a discomfiting family secret that could be unearthed by those who oppose him. The author sensitively chronicles the police investigation and the courtroom drama that ensue as well as Alex’s attempt to clamber out of his own despair. Canaff, a former prosecutor, is a consultant who specializes in cases that involve the exploitation of children. His expertise is evident throughout the novel, expressed both in his depiction of the legal process and the gruesome world of sex trafficking. The beating heart of the plot is Alex’s own emotional struggle, affectingly conveyed. Alex tries to start anew in the wake of the trauma that changed his life but it’s not clear such a recommencement is available to him. As his girlfriend observes: “You live in a world framed by death, hon. All of it violent. You put yourself there. That’s fine, it’s a noble job, and you’re great at it. But I’m not sure you can step out of it.” While the murder mystery that unfolds is an unusually ghastly one—this material is not for fainthearted readers—it’s also intricately composed and dramatically enthralling. The author’s writing is quietly powerful—the prose is generally unadorned with literary embellishments and devices, a style that permits the plot itself to take center stage. Further, Canaff avoids the temptation of cinematic neatness in the tale’s denouement—even if the case is solved, the darkness of human life remains an imperishable mystery, an enigma he artfully presents with impressive authorial restraint.
A disturbing but intelligently crafted crime drama.Pub Date: Sept. 15, 2018
ISBN: 978-1-64136-845-2
Page Count: 400
Publisher: Waldorf Publishing
Review Posted Online: Oct. 31, 2018
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
Suspenseful, frightening, and sometimes poignant—provided the reader has a generously willing suspension of disbelief.
A man walks out of a bar and his life becomes a kaleidoscope of altered states in this science-fiction thriller.
Crouch opens on a family in a warm, resonant domestic moment with three well-developed characters. At home in Chicago’s Logan Square, Jason Dessen dices an onion while his wife, Daniela, sips wine and chats on the phone. Their son, Charlie, an appealing 15-year-old, sketches on a pad. Still, an undertone of regret hovers over the couple, a preoccupation with roads not taken, a theme the book will literally explore, in multifarious ways. To start, both Jason and Daniela abandoned careers that might have soared, Jason as a physicist, Daniela as an artist. When Charlie was born, he suffered a major illness. Jason was forced to abandon promising research to teach undergraduates at a small college. Daniela turned from having gallery shows to teaching private art lessons to middle school students. On this bracing October evening, Jason visits a local bar to pay homage to Ryan Holder, a former college roommate who just received a major award for his work in neuroscience, an honor that rankles Jason, who, Ryan says, gave up on his career. Smarting from the comment, Jason suffers “a sucker punch” as he heads home that leaves him “standing on the precipice.” From behind Jason, a man with a “ghost white” face, “red, pursed lips," and "horrifying eyes” points a gun at Jason and forces him to drive an SUV, following preset navigational directions. At their destination, the abductor forces Jason to strip naked, beats him, then leads him into a vast, abandoned power plant. Here, Jason meets men and women who insist they want to help him. Attempting to escape, Jason opens a door that leads him into a series of dark, strange, yet eerily familiar encounters that sometimes strain credibility, especially in the tale's final moments.
Suspenseful, frightening, and sometimes poignant—provided the reader has a generously willing suspension of disbelief.Pub Date: July 26, 2016
ISBN: 978-1-101-90422-0
Page Count: 352
Publisher: Crown
Review Posted Online: May 3, 2016
Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 15, 2016
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