A good detective in an incendiary procedural.
A Yorkshire detective untangles an old murder and new arsons.
DS Adam Tyler, a cold-case investigator for the South Yorkshire Police, is a bit of a loner, but his boss wants him to network more so he lets Sally-Ann, one of his civilian colleagues, talk him into joining a pub evening with the South Yorkshire Police LGBT Support Network. He doesn't plan to stay long, and when he meets a handsome man at the bar—"Sweetheart, he was everyone's type. Even mine," Sally-Ann says—he abandons the group to go home with him. The next morning, when he gets to work, Sally-Ann tells him there's big news: The body of Gerald Cartwright, a local tycoon and shady character who disappeared years ago, has been found in the basement of his own house during a renovation ordered by his 21-year-old son, who'd just inherited it. Tyler manages to get himself assigned to the investigation though the detective who's been working on it since Cartwright's disappearance doesn't want to hand it over to cold cases; he soon discovers the identity of his one-night stand: Oscar Cartwright, son of the deceased and potential suspect, which further complicates his position. Meanwhile, Edna and Lily, elderly Cartwright retainers of various duties, have begun receiving unsettling anonymous letters, and the whole community is rattled by a series of arsons that seem more and more likely to be related to the discovery of Cartwright's body. As Tyler's investigation slowly uncovers a sordid history of manipulation and abuse, the violence increases and he is assaulted several times. The repetitive nature of these assaults is a weakness in the book, but the richness of Tyler's character and the vividness of his negotiation of his own sexuality and the casual bigotry in his community are effective. The subsidiary characters are lively and believable, the arsons are particularly well described, and though the plot sometimes seems gratuitously complex, this is a rewarding entertainment.
A good detective in an incendiary procedural.Pub Date: Feb. 25, 2020
ISBN: 978-0-525-54202-5
Page Count: 368
Publisher: Putnam
Review Posted Online: Nov. 24, 2019
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Dec. 15, 2019
BOOK REVIEW
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
A suspenseful, professional-grade north country procedural whose heroine, a deft mix of compassion and attitude, would be...
Box takes another break from his highly successful Joe Pickett series (Stone Cold, 2014, etc.) for a stand-alone about a police detective, a developmentally delayed boy, and a package everyone in North Dakota wants to grab.
Cassandra Dewell can’t leave Montana’s Lewis and Clark County fast enough for her new job as chief investigator for Jon Kirkbride, sheriff of Bakken County. She leaves behind no memories worth keeping: her husband is dead, her boss has made no bones about disliking her, and she’s looking forward to new responsibilities and the higher salary underwritten by North Dakota’s sudden oil boom. But Bakken County has its own issues. For one thing, it’s cold—a whole lot colder than the coldest weather Cassie’s ever imagined. For another, the job she turns out to have been hired for—leading an investigation her new boss doesn’t feel he can entrust to his own force—makes her queasy. The biggest problem, though, is one she doesn’t know about until it slaps her in the face. A fatal car accident that was anything but accidental has jarred loose a stash of methamphetamines and cash that’s become the center of a battle between the Sons of Freedom, Bakken County’s traditional drug sellers, and MS-13, the Salvadorian upstarts who are muscling in on their territory. It’s a setup that leaves scant room for law enforcement officers or for Kyle Westergaard, the 12-year-old paperboy damaged since birth by fetal alcohol syndrome, who’s walked away from the wreck with a prize all too many people would kill for.
A suspenseful, professional-grade north country procedural whose heroine, a deft mix of compassion and attitude, would be welcome to return and tie up the gaping loose end Box leaves. The unrelenting cold makes this the perfect beach read.Pub Date: July 28, 2015
ISBN: 978-0-312-58321-7
Page Count: 272
Publisher: Minotaur
Review Posted Online: April 21, 2015
Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 15, 2015
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