A thriller with fine worldbuilding that lays the foundation for further adventures in a dangerous and ethically ambiguous...
A newspaper reporter faces a literal deadline when his editor assigns him to investigate a Mexican drug lord.
One fateful evening in 1993, El Paso Tribune photographer Eddie Stevenson walks into his editor Ken Perry’s office, his face a bloody mess. When the editor asks what happened, the photog say that thugs, sent by wealthy Mexican drug lord Gustavo Jiménez, beat him up, smashed his cameras, and told him to deliver a message to crime reporter Tom Harley, telling him that he’s “dead meat.” The beating becomes front-page news and emboldens Perry: “We’re going to expose that señor and his whole rotten business,” he tells the Associated Press, “even if it takes us to the president of Mexico.” But is Harley the right reporter for the assignment? “Harley was lazy, an anthropologist” is the office scuttlebutt, so, in order to “light a fire under the story,” the editors put reporter Hank Klinger on it—and to light a fire under him, they mention the story’s Pulitzer Prize possibilities. The assault and the national press attention it draws set in motion a twisty, suspenseful thriller in which players on both sides of the border act on increasingly suspect motives. Baker, author of The Boost (2014), cannily sets his story in the early 1990s, when newspapers, big and small, could topple governments, and reporters weren’t dismissed as purveyors of “fake news.” The author, a former journalist for the El Paso Herald-Post during the same time period, not only knows the lay of the land, but also the ins and outs of news reporting. At one point, a journalist realizes that he’d neglected to report a major crime: “He’d played detective and forgotten about his job. Burying a story like that could get him fired.” It’s a densely populated narrative, but some characters stand out, such as banker Diana Clements, Stevenson’s unlikely girlfriend, in whom savvy readers will sense a bit of danger.
A thriller with fine worldbuilding that lays the foundation for further adventures in a dangerous and ethically ambiguous milieu.Pub Date: March 31, 2022
ISBN: 978-1-63988-299-1
Page Count: 348
Publisher: Atmosphere Press
Review Posted Online: May 31, 2022
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 1, 2022
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
Even when King is not at his best, he’s still good.
Two killers are on the loose. Can they be stopped?
In this ambitious mystery, the prolific and popular King tells the story of a serial murderer who pledges, in a note to Buckeye City police, to kill “13 innocents and 1 guilty,” in order, we eventually learn, to avenge the death of a man who was framed and convicted for possession of child pornography and then killed in prison. At the same time, the author weaves in the efforts of another would-be murderer, a member of a violently abortion-opposing church who has been stalking a popular feminist author and women’s rights activist on a publicity tour. To tell these twin tales of murders done and intended, King summons some familiar characters, including private investigator Holly Gibney, whom readers may recall from previous novels. Gibney is enlisted to help Buckeye City police detective Izzy Jaynes try to identify and stop the serial killer, who has been murdering random unlucky citizens with chilling efficiency. She’s also been hired as a bodyguard for author and activist Kate McKay and her young assistant. The author succeeds in grabbing the reader’s interest and holding it throughout this page-turning tale of terror, which reads like a big-screen thriller. The action is well paced, the settings are vividly drawn, and King’s choice to focus on the real and deadly dangers of extremist thought is admirable. But the book is hamstrung by cliched characters, hackneyed dialogue (both spoken and internal), and motives that feel both convoluted and overly simplistic. King shines brightest when he gets to the heart of our darkest fears and desires, but here the dangers seem a bit cerebral. In his warning letter to the police, the serial killer wonders if his cryptic rationale to murder will make sense to others, concluding, “It does to me, and that is enough.” Is it enough? In another writer’s work, it might not be, but in King’s skilled hands, it probably is.
Even when King is not at his best, he’s still good.Pub Date: May 27, 2025
ISBN: 9781668089330
Page Count: 448
Publisher: Scribner
Review Posted Online: Feb. 1, 2025
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 1, 2025
As the prosecutor sadly observes: “All this because of a dead buffalo.”
Idyllic Catalina Island turns out to be just as crime infested as the rest of Los Angeles County in the latest series launch by the creator of Harry Bosch, Renée Ballard, and the Lincoln Lawyer.
Det. Sgt. Stilwell has been bounced off the county homicide squad and rusticized to Catalina, where the exclusive Black Marlin Club won’t admit even four-term Avalon Mayor Doug Allen to full membership and the most serious infraction seems to be the killing and cutting up of a buffalo, presumably by Henry Gaston, who operates Island Mystery Tours when he’s not threatening endangered species. All that changes with the discovery of a body sunk in the surrounding waters. The corpse, most recognizable by its streak of purple hair, is that of Leigh-Anne Moss, a Black Marlin server recently fired for fraternizing with members and guests she sees as potential sugar daddies. Stilwell is sufficiently invested in her murder to compete vigorously over jurisdiction with Rex Ahearn, the LA County homicide detective who kept his job when Stilwell lost his. Their rivalry, fueled by mutual contempt, is only the first hint that Stilwell will end up fighting his counterparts in law enforcement and local government at least as hard as he fights crooks like hit man Merris Spivak and Oscar “Baby Head” Terranova, Henry’s boss, who comes under sharper scrutiny when Henry disappears and ends up dead himself. Connelly handles his hero’s obligatory romance with assistant harbormaster Tash Dano and his increasingly wary alliance with assistant D.A. Monika Juarez with equal professionalism, and if the wrap-up leaves some loose ends dangling, well, that’s what franchises are for.
As the prosecutor sadly observes: “All this because of a dead buffalo.”Pub Date: May 20, 2025
ISBN: 9780316588485
Page Count: 352
Publisher: Little, Brown
Review Posted Online: April 19, 2025
Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 15, 2025
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