Whether Rikel’s debut adult mystery is intended as a gothic parody or an Agatha Christie homage, it falls well short of...
A batty old woman fears that everyone’s after her for her money. And you know what? She may be right.
When Rochelle Gallagher brings her husband, Rick, and their children, Robbie and Shelly, to see her aunt, Millicent Perkins, she’s shocked that the beautiful estate she remembered from an earlier visit is overgrown and untended. Even more disturbing is Aunt Millicent, who has gone from the glamorous woman who entertained Rochelle and Rick 15 years ago to a withered, slovenly hag. Although she has moments of lucidity and even civility, her predominant emotion is an intense loathing directed indiscriminately at her relatives, her groundskeeper, the estate manager, her deceased husband Bernie’s former partner and a visiting nurse. A cookie jar full of wadded-up cash, a gun collection and a hidden treasure cause even more confusion when Millicent turns up dead in her tower. All the people in her life have a reason for wanting to kill her, and so will many readers, even when the plot takes an unexpected and implausible turn. The clunky dialogue, cartoonish characters, weak humor and awkward transition from cynicism to sentimentality provide additional grounds for skipping this amateurish entry.
Whether Rikel’s debut adult mystery is intended as a gothic parody or an Agatha Christie homage, it falls well short of either mark. Even the children are unconvincingly drawn—hardly an endorsement for an author whose previous volumes (The Windmill, 2013, etc.) have been aimed at a young audience.Pub Date: Jan. 22, 2014
ISBN: 978-1-4328-2780-9
Page Count: 312
Publisher: Five Star/Gale Cengage
Review Posted Online: Nov. 2, 2013
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Nov. 15, 2013
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
Big, brooding debut police thriller by Los Angeles Times crime-reporter Connelly, whose labyrinthine tale of a cop tracking vicious bank-robbers sparks and smolders but never quite catches fire. Connelly shows off his deep knowledge of cop procedure right away, expertly detailing the painstaking examination by LAPD homicide detective Hieronymus (Harry) Bosch of the death-scene of sometime junkie Billy Meadows, whom Bosch knew as a fellow "tunnel rat" in Vietnam and who's now o.d.'d in an abandoned water tunnel. Pushing Meadows's death as murder while his colleagues see it as accidental, Bosch, already a black sheep for his vigilante-like ways, further alienates police brass and is soon shadowed by two nastily clownish Internal Affairs cops wherever he goes—even to FBI headquarters, which Bosch storms after he learns that the Bureau had investigated him for a tunnel-engineered bank robbery that Meadows is implicated in. Assigned to work with beautiful, blond FBI agent Eleanor Wish, who soon shares his bed in an edgy alliance, Bosch comes to suspect that the robbers killed Meadows because the vet pawned some of the loot, and that their subsequent killing of the only witness to the Meadows slaying points to a turned cop. But who? Before Bosch can find out, a trace on the bank-robbery victims points him toward a fortune in smuggled diamonds and the likelihood of a second heist—leading to the blundering death of the IAD cops, the unveiling of one bad cop, an anticipated but too-brief climax in the L.A. sewer tunnels, and, in a twisty anticlimax, the revelation of a second rotten law officer. Swift and sure, with sharp characterizations, but at heart really a tightly wrapped package of cop-thriller cliches, from the hero's Dirty Harry persona to the venal brass, the mad-dog IAD cops, and the not-so-surprising villains. Still, Connelly knows his turf and perhaps he'll map it more freshly next time out.
Pub Date: Jan. 21, 1992
ISBN: 0-316-15361-3
Page Count: 400
Publisher: Little, Brown
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Nov. 1, 1991
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