Reaves’ prose falls somewhere between lean and flat and most of the characters are one-dimensional. But the chase has pull,...
A wounded Iraq vet finds Chicago almost as treacherous as Baghdad in this latest from prolific noir author Reaves (Homicide 69, 2006, etc.).
Trying to get his life going after duty in Iraq, Tommy McLain heads to Chicago and lines up a couple of odd jobs. At a party, he’s attracted to Lisa DiPietro and they soon begin a passionate affair. So he’s catnip when Lisa tells him she’s being stalked. She has alerted the police, but Tommy thinks they do too little. He decides to go after the stalker and warn him off Lisa. His confrontation with the man, Joe Salerno, veers out of control and, before McLain knows what’s happening, he shoots Salerno dead. Days later, McLain learns he’s landed himself in even bigger trouble. He spots a newspaper story that reports Salerno was the son of mafia boss Rocco Salerno and that another, recent murder may have been Salerno’s revenge against a rival gang. In what smells like a setup, a man confesses to Salerno’s murder. Conscience stricken, McLain comes clean with Salerno Sr. The boss makes an offer McLain can’t refuse: Knock off rival boss Pete Catania and walk free. McLain stalks Catania but can’t kill the man cold. As McLain heads home, the police nab him, ready to charge him with Salerno’s murder. Then the FBI steps in and makes its offer. They’ll let McLain off on Salerno’s murder and give him witness protection and a new identity if he’ll put on a wire, penetrate Catania’s lair and gather incriminating evidence. The job looks like a way out, but then McLain starts to wonder what many readers will wonder early on: Was he unwittingly led into this imbroglio by Lisa? Darting through a trail of quick, surprising reversals, McLain gets his answer.
Reaves’ prose falls somewhere between lean and flat and most of the characters are one-dimensional. But the chase has pull, and feisty, cocky, yet vulnerable McLain looks primed to be a series hero.Pub Date: Nov. 1, 2008
ISBN: 978-1-60598-003-4
Page Count: 320
Publisher: Pegasus
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 15, 2008
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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