A spunky sleuth and plenty of period flavor enliven the first in a new series that takes Calkins (A Death Along the River...
In 1929, a needy young woman lands a job in a Chicago speak-easy. What could possibly go wrong?
Gina Ricci is the sole support of her father, whose worsening palsy is making it almost impossible for him to work. Her friend Lulu, who works at the Third Door, suggests that she apply to replace a cigarette girl who was recently murdered. The speak-easy is efficiently run by Signora Castallazzo and her mobster husband, Big Mike. Gina is soon immersed in a world of socialites, college kids, straying husbands, and veterans seeking escape from their problems. In addition to the attractive young women who sell drinks and put on a show watched over by vigilant bouncers, she meets Ned, a piano player who was in love with the murdered girl, and Marty Doyle, a photographer who turns out to be the favorite cousin of Gina’s mother, who died when she was young. Gina’s intrigued by what Marty can tell her about her mother’s side of the family, Irish relatives who’ve never reached out to her. Another man who takes an interest in Gina is wounded veteran Lt. Roark, who’s on leave from the police but still taking crime scene photos. While taking a break, she finds Marty near death from a stab wound. With his dying breath he asks her to hide his camera. When she goes to Marty’s funeral, she meets some of her relatives and learns that she’s his heir. Both of his two apartments, including the one he used as a darkroom, have been searched. Clearly, something on the last roll of film Marty shot poses a threat. Unable to trust anyone, Gina takes up Roark’s offer to teach her how to develop and print photographs. She develops the film but can’t figure out which of its pictures points to a ruthless killer.
A spunky sleuth and plenty of period flavor enliven the first in a new series that takes Calkins (A Death Along the River Fleet, 2016, etc.) from English historicals to more recent but equally violent times.Pub Date: April 30, 2019
ISBN: 978-1-250-19083-3
Page Count: 320
Publisher: Minotaur
Review Posted Online: Feb. 3, 2019
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 15, 2019
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
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
Proficient but eminently predictable. Amid all the time shifts and embedded backstories, the most surprising feature is how...
A convicted killer’s list of five people he wants dead runs the gamut from the wife he’s already had murdered to franchise heroine Ali Reynolds.
Back in the day, women came from all over to consult Santa Clarita fertility specialist Dr. Edward Gilchrist. Many of them left his care happily pregnant, never dreaming that the father of the babies they carried was none other than the physician himself, who donated his own sperm rather than that of the handsome, athletic, disease-free men pictured in his scrapbook. When Alexandra Munsey’s son, Evan, is laid low by the kidney disease he’s inherited from his biological father and she returns to Gilchrist in search of the donor’s medical records, the roof begins to fall in on him. By the time it’s done falling, he’s serving a life sentence in Folsom Prison for commissioning the death of his wife, Dawn, the former nurse and sometime egg donor who’d turned on him. With nothing left to lose, Gilchrist tattoos himself with the initials of five people he blames for his fall: Dawn; Leo Manuel Aurelio, the hit man he’d hired to dispose of her; Kaitlyn Todd, the nurse/receptionist who took Dawn’s place; Alex Munsey, whose search for records upset his apple cart; and Ali Reynolds, the TV reporter who’d helped put Alex in touch with the dozen other women who formed the Progeny Project because their children looked just like hers. No matter that Ali’s been out of both California and the news business for years; Gilchrist and his enablers know that revenge can’t possibly be served too cold. Wonder how far down that list they’ll get before Ali, aided once more by Frigg, the methodical but loose-cannon AI first introduced in Duel to the Death (2018), turns on them?
Proficient but eminently predictable. Amid all the time shifts and embedded backstories, the most surprising feature is how little the boundary-challenged AI, who gets into the case more or less inadvertently, differs from your standard human sidekick with issues.Pub Date: April 2, 2019
ISBN: 978-1-5011-5101-9
Page Count: 352
Publisher: Gallery Books/Simon & Schuster
Review Posted Online: Feb. 18, 2019
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 1, 2019
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