If you think this story sounds familiar, you’re right. Flynn’s glum debut is so intent on sketching in his depressive hero...
A second-generation cop banished from Boston to his little hometown seeks a comeback by tangling with a world-class designer drug.
Meet Third Rail, aka Thrilla, Mindfuck and ADA. It lifts you up, irons out your problems and revises your past mistakes so they’re actually empowering. You can see why everyone in Nagog, Massachusetts, would want it and why Mr. Mach, lord of the Zero Room, and his street-level associate Declan Nevis would be happy to supply it. There is a downside, though. Third Rail makes you feel so invincible that one apparent user, financier Robert Hammond, fatally crashes his car while he’s under the influence, and another, high school student Kelly Pierce, caps her doomed masquerade as a track star by running into a tree. Luckily for Nagog, but not so luckily for himself, Officer Edward Harkness is on hand, emptying parking meters ever since an accidental death in Boston stopped his career there dead in its tracks. Harkness thinks he’s hit bottom, but in fact, his slide has hardly begun. It continues when he takes up with artist/bartender Thalia Havoc, loses the Glock that’s been issued to him, duels repeatedly with his nemesis, Sgt. Dabilis, and attends the funeral of Capt. William Munro, the Nagog cop who’s always been another father to him. How can Harkness retrieve his weapon without tipping off his superiors that it’s gone, and what will he do with it once he’s got it again?
If you think this story sounds familiar, you’re right. Flynn’s glum debut is so intent on sketching in his depressive hero that it never gives him much of a mystery to solve or explains why two different women—hard-living Thalia and baker Candace Hammond—would be so interested in him.Pub Date: June 10, 2014
ISBN: 978-0-544-22627-2
Page Count: 224
Publisher: Houghton Mifflin Harcourt
Review Posted Online: May 6, 2014
Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 15, 2014
BOOK REVIEW
More of a western than a mystery, like most of Joe’s adventures, and all the better for the open physical clashes that...
Wyoming Game and Fish Warden Joe Pickett (Free Fire, 2007, etc.), once again at the governor’s behest, stalks the wraithlike figure who’s targeting elk hunters for death.
Frank Urman was taken down by a single rifle shot, field-dressed, beheaded and hung upside-down to bleed out. (You won’t believe where his head eventually turns up.) The poker chip found near his body confirms that he’s the third victim of the Wolverine, a killer whose animus against hunters is evidently being whipped up by anti-hunting activist Klamath Moore. The potential effects on the state’s hunting revenues are so calamitous that Governor Spencer Rulon pulls out all the stops, and Pickett is forced to work directly with Wyoming Game and Fish Director Randy Pope, the boss who fired him from his regular job in Saddlestring District. Three more victims will die in rapid succession before Joe is given a more congenial colleague: Nate Romanowski, the outlaw falconer who pledged to protect Joe’s family before he was taken into federal custody. As usual in this acclaimed series, the mystery is slight and its solution eminently guessable long before it’s confirmed by testimony from an unlikely source. But the people and scenes and enduring conflicts that lead up to that solution will stick with you for a long time.
More of a western than a mystery, like most of Joe’s adventures, and all the better for the open physical clashes that periodically release the tension between the scheming adversaries.Pub Date: May 20, 2008
ISBN: 978-0-399-15488-1
Page Count: 320
Publisher: Putnam
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 15, 2008
This ran in the S.E.P. and resulted in more demands for the story in book form than ever recorded. Well, here it is and it is a honey. Imagine ten people, not knowing each other, not knowing why they were invited on a certain island house-party, not knowing their hosts. Then imagine them dead, one by one, until none remained alive, nor any clue to the murderer. Grand suspense, a unique trick, expertly handled.
Pub Date: Feb. 21, 1939
ISBN: 0062073478
Page Count: 272
Publisher: Dodd, Mead
Review Posted Online: Sept. 20, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 1, 1939
SEEN & HEARD
© Copyright 2025 Kirkus Media LLC. All Rights Reserved.
Follow
Popular in this Genre
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.
