The mystery is folderol—the motive comes out of nowhere, and the choice of Roman numerals is never explained—but first-timer...
A Cape Cod prosecutor who’s just fought to put away a cold-blooded killer fights to free him in the wake of a series of crimes that look like his work.
Not that Martha Nickerson has any love for Manuel Rodriguez, who reacted to the news of his conviction for a murder last Memorial Day by trying to strangle her in open court. (Marty brings her Lady Smith .32 to his sentencing hearing, though “I would never fire it in this crowded courtroom.”) When a second scion of wealthy, insular Chatham is found stabbed to death exactly one year later with a pattern of wounds that strongly suggests the Roman numeral II, however, Marty’s disturbed by her recollection of what had seemed like the numeral I carved in Michael Scott’s chest. Are the mutilations nothing more than a coincidence, or the work of a copycat killer, as stop-at-nothing First Assistant DA Geraldine Schilling, insists, or do they indicate that a serial killer was celebrating a patriotic holiday by committing the murder of which Rodriguez was convicted? The lack of support in the prosecutor’s office—don’t even mention Marty’s ex-husband, globetrotting forensic psychiatrist Ralph Ellis, who makes a great living testifying on behalf of defendants pleading some kind of diminished responsibility—drives her into cahoots with Rodriguez’s upright public defender Harry Madigan, who urges her to bug her own office to see whether evidence is still being planted against his client. But now that La Schilling’s announced her candidacy for the DA’s post, will embattled Marty have her job long enough to monitor the equipment she’s set to eavesdrop on her colleagues?
The mystery is folderol—the motive comes out of nowhere, and the choice of Roman numerals is never explained—but first-timer Connors’s strong sense of pace and skeptical reflections about the morality of the legal system could help her ride a stronger plot into Scott Turow territory.Pub Date: Aug. 27, 2002
ISBN: 0-7432-2906-1
Page Count: 304
Publisher: Scribner
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 15, 2002
Like a popcorn action flick: fun but lacking in substance.
Two wolf shifters must catch a criminal in the midst of hazardous winter weather: Action, adventure, and romance kick off a new series by Spear (Falling for the Cougar, 2019, etc.).
Private Investigator Nicole Grayson has an edge that some of her colleagues don’t. She’s a gray wolf shifter, and her heightened sense of smell makes for excellent tracking abilities. When her latest assignment, investigating a fraudulent life insurance claim, leads her to an isolated ski lodge inhabited by a group of shifter brothers, Nicole realizes that this particular mission is different. Blake Wolff has finally found peace and quiet, as he and his brothers have turned their land into a sanctuary for wolf shifters like themselves. When Nicole turns up at the lodge, sniffing around and looking for answers, Blake volunteers to help. The sooner she wraps up her investigation, the sooner Blake can return to maintaining the calm community the Wolff siblings have built. The suspense never fully delivers despite the setup of dangerous situations and the characters’ ability to shift into wolves. Of course, the bad guys get caught and the good guys prevail, but the stakes never seem terribly high. With corny, on-the-nose details such as having Wolff and Grayson as surnames for gray wolf shifters, it's hard to tell if Spear is in on the joke or if some things sounded better in theory than reality. The brightest spot here, as in most of Spears’ books, is her dedication to writing strong heroines with interesting professions, and Nicole fits perfectly into that box. She’s capable, competent, and a force to be reckoned with in a difficult situation. Blake is happy to let her take the lead without any egos getting in the way, which is something all readers will appreciate.
Like a popcorn action flick: fun but lacking in substance.Pub Date: Feb. 25, 2020
ISBN: 978-1-4926-9775-6
Page Count: 384
Publisher: Sourcebooks Casablanca
Review Posted Online: Jan. 12, 2020
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 1, 2020
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
As tangled and turbulent as the hero’s nightmares, and that’s saying quite a bit.
Having survived his tempestuous debut, P.T. Marsh, of Georgia's Mason Falls Police Department, is back for more—including some residue from that first case that just won’t go away.
Dispatched like an errand boy to wealthy real estate mogul Ennis Fultz’s home to find out why he hasn’t joined his bridge buddies, Mayor Stems and interim police chief Jeff Pernacek, for their monthly game, Marsh and his partner, Remy Morgan, find Fultz dead in his bed. It turns out that his passing, devoutly longed for by so many of the people he’d crushed or outwitted on his way to the top, was helped along by the strategic dose of nitrogen somebody substituted for the oxygen he inhaled regularly, especially when he was expecting particular demands on his virility. Marsh and Morgan quickly focus on two candidates who might have made those demands: Suzy Kang, a recent visitor who was so eager to cover any traces that she’d been to Fultz’s house that she sold the car she’d driven there, and Connie Fultz, the victim’s ex-wife and perhaps his current lover, who acidly swats them away and tells them: “Look for some little gal who’s into bondage.” McMahon excels in sweating the procedural details of the investigation, which take the partners from a search for Suzy Kang and that missing car to a not-so-accidental car crash that’s evidently targeted a young girl who has no idea she’s implicated in the case. But he’s set his sights higher, taking in everything from a civil suit the relatives of the perp Marsh shot in The Good Detective (2019) have launched against him to a possible conspiracy behind the deaths of his deeply grieved wife and son, all of it larded with Georgia attitude and truisms, a few of which rise to eloquence (“I wasn’t good at faith. I was good at proof”).
As tangled and turbulent as the hero’s nightmares, and that’s saying quite a bit.Pub Date: March 3, 2020
ISBN: 978-0-525-53556-0
Page Count: 368
Publisher: Putnam
Review Posted Online: Dec. 8, 2019
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 1, 2020
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
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