Strong debut suspense novel set in Seattle. Did Denton Hake rob and rape Sandra Loyacano? He admits to the burglary, denies the rape, but is convicted of both anyway. Denton, however, is not your average burglar: He has a history of nonalcoholic blackouts, and for years has been having involuntary out-of-body episodes that reveal things he couldn't otherwise know. When he is granted parole, Denton moves in with his brother Elliot and is hired by Simon Lefcourt, a contractor with a soft spot for ex-cons. One day Denton is sent to the jewelry store that's run by Simon's daughter Gwen, a nymphomaniac who also has a special fondness for ex-cons. Business isn't good, Gwen tells Denton, and she can't keep up her insurance payments; then the store is burglarized. Denton immediately becomes a suspect. But Denton knows, though he can't prove, that Gwen robbed herself for the insurance on her inventory. Meanwhile, Denton sees lesbian shrink Randy Nelson, who believes his stories about out-of-body experiences. The OOBs began when Denton's father killed himself. Or did he? Denton supposedly discovered the body, although his recollection of events is hazy; there's also the possibility that Elliot had something to do with Dad's death. Things get even more tense between the brothers when Mimi, Elliot's alcoholic wife, threatens to leave him because his ``rapist'' brother lives over their garage. When Gwen is murdered, foggy Denton gets arrested, put on trial, and finally faces Death Row. What works here is the flat, immensely well-detailed storytelling, reminiscent of James M. Cain at his best, although the supernatural elements, at the same time, increasingly throw the plot off balance. Baum tries to have it both ways, heightening the supernatural while simultaneously offering a physical explanation for Denton's odd experiences, and he tries to float one too many subplots. Still, for much of its length a tough, original, and compelling debut, showing great promise. (Author tour)
Pub Date: May 21, 1997
ISBN: 0-312-15620-0
Page Count: 224
Publisher: St. Martin's
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: April 1, 1997
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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