After his wife is stabbed to death during a bungled burglary attempt, Saginaw Park investment-broker Harvey Rozier asks that Sgt. Abe Lieberman be assigned to the case—even though Rozier murdered his wife himself and lives in fear that Lieberman will track down the hapless burglar who interrupted the killing. And he's not alone in his fear. While the witness, rabbity burglar and Sunday painter George (Pitty-Pitty) Patniks, hides under the covers from Rozier and the cops, Dr. Jacob Berry—the new Uptown Chicago police physician—cowers in his office with his illegal handgun, terrified of three teenagers who taunted him from a nearby el platform. And Lieberman's partner, Bill Hanrahan, who's bent on breaking Rozier's careful alibi, feels the heat from a Chinatown elder determined to keep him from marrying Iris Chen. The only comic relief comes on the home front, when Lieberman and his wife find their home invaded by a neighboring rabbi obsessed with buying the place now, right now, tonight. Another stellar performance, alight with menace and compassion; and if it's not up to the lonely heights of Lieberman's Day (1994), very few procedurals are. The biggest mystery: Why isn't this outstanding series, now in its fourth book, pulling in the vast audience abandoned by Harry Kemelman's Rabbi Small?
Pub Date: April 12, 1995
ISBN: 0-8050-2576-6
Page Count: 224
Publisher: Henry Holt
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 1, 1995
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
A high-country Presumed Innocent that moves like greased lightning. First of a welcome new series, though it’s hard to...
Rookie Twelve Sleep County Game Warden Joe Pickett’s not much of a shot, and he’s been looking like a goat ever since poacher Ote Keeley got the drop on him with his own gun during a routine arrest. But at least he’s doing better than Ote, who’s turned up dead on the woodpile outside Joe’s house. Joe’s search in Crazy Woman Creek canyon for the two outfitters and guides Ote was most recently partnered with ends happily, though violently, and suddenly Joe is the man of the hour. Longtime County Sheriff Bud Barnum nervously asks Joe’s assurance that he’s not going to support neighboring game warden Wacey Hedeman’s challenge in the upcoming election; trophy wife Aimee Kensinger, who really likes men in uniforms, invites Joe’s family to housesit her palatial digs for three weeks; and wily Vern Dunnegan, Joe’s predecessor, wants Joe to join him in pulling down big bucks from InterWest resources, the fat-cat corporation for whose gas pipeline Vern’s lining up local support. All this good news is only a front, of course, for a monstrous assault on Joe’s livelihood, his integrity, and his family—and incidentally on an inoffensive species long assumed extinct. In response, Joe promises one of the bad guys that “things are going to get real western,” and that’s exactly what happens in the satisfyingly action-filled climax.
A high-country Presumed Innocent that moves like greased lightning. First of a welcome new series, though it’s hard to imagine tourism-marketing exec Box topping his debut.Pub Date: July 9, 2001
ISBN: 0-399-14748-9
Page Count: 304
Publisher: Putnam
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 1, 2001
PERSPECTIVES
Middling for this fine series, which automatically makes it one of the season’s highlights.
Fired from his job as Game and Fish Warden after wrapping up his colorful sixth case (In Plain Sight, 2006), Joe Pickett returns to nab the perpetrator of the perfect crime.
According to his own confession, small-time lawyer Clay McCann, feeling bullied and insulted by four campers he encountered in Yellowstone Park, shot them dead. A ingenious technicality he’s discovered, however, prevents him from being tried and convicted. Wyoming Governor Spencer Rulon, a former prosecutor, can only slap McCann’s wrist, but he’s determined to figure out what Rick Hoening, one of the victims, meant by an email that hinted at secrets that could have a major impact on the state’s financial health. So he asks Joe, now working as foreman at his father-in-law’s ranch, to poke around the park while maintaining full deniability for the Governor. The situation stinks, but Joe’s so eager to get away from his wife’s poisonous mother and go back to his old job that he agrees, and in short order there’s a spate of new killings to deal with—some committed by McCann, some not. As usual, there’s little mystery about which of the sketchy suspects is behind the skullduggery. But, as usual, the central situation is so strong, the continuing characters so appealing and the spectacular landscape so lovingly evoked that it doesn’t matter.
Middling for this fine series, which automatically makes it one of the season’s highlights.Pub Date: May 10, 2007
ISBN: 0-399-15427-2
Page Count: 288
Publisher: Putnam
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 15, 2007
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