Competent, routine work less notable for suspense or sleuthing chops than for what goes on, early, often and satisfyingly,...
Manhattan attorney Stone Barrington (Loitering with Intent, 2009, etc.) gets dragged back onto the police force to close the books on his 17th case.
Stone prides his ability to turn on a dime. When Georgia peach Carrie Cox walks into Elaine’s, he wastes not a moment in introducing himself and inviting her to the table he shares with former NYPD partner Dino Bacchetti. Learning that she’s an actress turned lip model who’s just fended off a seriously crude casting-couch come-on, he offers his professional services, and in a flash Carrie has followed Stone home, made peace with the offender and been cast in the starring role. She’s apparently headed for happily-ever-after until ex-husband Max Long attacks her. Stone quickly gets an injunction against Max and provides bodyguards to keep him at arm’s length. That plotline peters out, replaced by the far more prosaic dilemma of gallery owner Philip Parsons, who’s worried about his wild child. Hildy, 24, is involved with Derek Sharpe, a sleazy, talentless painter who may also be dealing drugs. Indeed, Stone learns from his erstwhile father-in-law, mob boss Eduardo Bianci, that Sharpe is moving such large quantities of dope that his life is in considerable danger. Further danger to Hildy is posed by Sharpe’s financial advisor, Sig Larsen, poised to snare her in a Ponzi scheme. Once Stone has been drafted into the force by eager-beaver Lt. Brian Doyle, who’s determined to keep the lawyer under his personal control, neither dangers nor complications arise. You’d wonder why Stone thought it worth his while to be involved with the whole affair, if it weren’t for the quality sex: with Carrie, with undercover cop Mitzi Reynolds, with Mitzi and Parsons’s gallery assistant Rita Gammage—but not, readers will be reassured to hear, with the client’s daughter or with Larsen’s willing “wife.”
Competent, routine work less notable for suspense or sleuthing chops than for what goes on, early, often and satisfyingly, between the sheets.Pub Date: Jan. 1, 2010
ISBN: 978-0-399-15611-3
Page Count: 304
Publisher: Putnam
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Dec. 1, 2009
An overly anodyne attempt at Southern gothic.
A series of unfortunate errors consigns a Baltimore nurse to a loveless marriage in the South.
It’s 1943, and Tess, from Baltimore’s Little Italy, is eagerly anticipating her upcoming nuptials. Her frustration grows, though, when her physician fiance, Vincent, accepts an extended out-of-town assignment to treat polio patients. On an impromptu excursion to Washington, D.C., Tess has too many martinis, resulting in a one-night stand with a chance acquaintance, a furniture manufacturer from North Carolina named Henry. Back in Baltimore, Tess’ extreme Catholic guilt over her indiscretion is compounded by the discovery that she’s pregnant. Eschewing a back-street abortion, she seeks out Henry in hopes of arranging child support—but to her shock, he proposes marriage instead. Once married to Henry and ensconced in his family mansion in Hickory, North Carolina, Tess gets a frosty reception from Henry’s mother, Miss Ruth, and his sister, Lucy, not to mention the other ladies of Hickory, especially Violet, who thought she was Henry’s fiancee. Tess’ isolation worsens after Lucy dies in a freak car accident, and Tess, the driver, is blamed. Her only friends are the African-American servants of the household and an African-American medium who helps her make peace with a growing number of unquiet spirits, including her mother, who expired of shock over Tess’ predicament, and Lucy, not to mention the baby, who did not make it to full term. The marriage is passionless but benign. Although Henry tries to be domineering, he always relents, letting Tess take the nurses' licensing exam and, later, go to work in Hickory’s historic polio hospital. Strangely, despite the pregnancy’s end, he refuses to divorce Tess. There are hints throughout that Henry has secrets; Lucy herself intimates as much shortly before her death. Once the polio hospital story takes over, the accident is largely forgotten, leading readers to suspect that Lucy’s death was a convenient way of postponing crucial revelations about Henry. Things develop predictably until, suddenly and belatedly, the plot heats up in an unpredictable but also unconvincing way.
An overly anodyne attempt at Southern gothic.Pub Date: Oct. 3, 2017
ISBN: 978-1-250-08727-0
Page Count: 384
Publisher: St. Martin's
Review Posted Online: July 16, 2017
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 1, 2017
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
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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