A compelling murder tale set in a thoroughly realized historical Shanghai.
Raymond (Madness, 2015, etc.) explores the Chinese underworld in this mystery, the first in a series.
In 1928, Shanghai is far more brutish than the wildest of the West: “Wicked, brazen Shanghai, a fabulous place, peopled with swindlers, newly-minted millionaires, titled expatriates and their sad, restless wives, gangsters, beggars, and whores. Indeed, it was easy to make money here, and just as easy to lose a fortune.” Zephyr Davies, the Harvard-educated scion of a wealthy San Francisco family, has spent five years in the city, pursuing wealth and adventure. Just as he is beginning to lose his sense of purpose and contemplate a return to America, a routine favor for a friend—to locate and return a prized family artifact—quickly devolves into a murder mystery that requires Davies’ skills as a competent (if amateur) detective. The artifact in question is a staff known as “the clouded twilight,” an object whose importance to Chinese history is likened to that of Betsy Ross’ first American flag. The case involves Monica Marshall, a half-Chinese woman who refuses to speak; Elder Brother, an opium smuggler considered the most feared man in China; and Wong Gou Sing, the mischievous clerk of a curio shop whose fate is inextricably tied with Davies’. Raymond’s ornate prose beautifully enlivens the world of the novel, luxuriating in the details of its physical setting: “The remarkable motorcar had an open body made of tulip wood, and an impossibly long, polished aluminum hood that culminated in a radiator crowned by a graceful, flying stork.” The book reads more like a historical epic than a normal crime mystery, delighting in the uniqueness of each character and location rather than relying on the shorthand tropes of the genre. Raymond writes in that sweet spot that celebrates the exotic without fetishizing it, making it familiar without watering it down. With three more books in the series already published, the author has provided a captivating world in which new readers may lose themselves for a while.
A compelling murder tale set in a thoroughly realized historical Shanghai.Pub Date: Dec. 17, 2014
ISBN: 978-1-5055-8443-1
Page Count: 396
Publisher: CreateSpace
Review Posted Online: April 3, 2017
Kirkus Reviews Issue: June 1, 2017
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
Forget about solving all these crimes; the signal triumph here is (spoiler) the heroine’s survival.
Another sweltering month in Charlotte, another boatload of mysteries past and present for overworked, overstressed forensic anthropologist Temperance Brennan.
A week after the night she chases but fails to catch a mysterious trespasser outside her town house, some unknown party texts Tempe four images of a corpse that looks as if it’s been chewed by wild hogs, because it has been. Showboat Medical Examiner Margot Heavner makes it clear that, breaking with her department’s earlier practice (The Bone Collection, 2016, etc.), she has no intention of calling in Tempe as a consultant and promptly identifies the faceless body herself as that of a young Asian man. Nettled by several errors in Heavner’s analysis, and even more by her willingness to share the gory details at a press conference, Tempe launches her own investigation, which is not so much off the books as against the books. Heavner isn’t exactly mollified when Tempe, aided by retired police detective Skinny Slidell and a host of experts, puts a name to the dead man. But the hints of other crimes Tempe’s identification uncovers, particularly crimes against children, spur her on to redouble her efforts despite the new M.E.’s splenetic outbursts. Before he died, it seems, Felix Vodyanov was linked to a passenger ferry that sank in 1994, an even earlier U.S. government project to research biological agents that could control human behavior, the hinky spiritual retreat Sparkling Waters, the dark web site DeepUnder, and the disappearances of at least four schoolchildren, two of whom have also turned up dead. And why on earth was Vodyanov carrying Tempe’s own contact information? The mounting evidence of ever more and ever worse skulduggery will pull Tempe deeper and deeper down what even she sees as a rabbit hole before she confronts a ringleader implicated in “Drugs. Fraud. Breaking and entering. Arson. Kidnapping. How does attempted murder sound?”
Forget about solving all these crimes; the signal triumph here is (spoiler) the heroine’s survival.Pub Date: March 17, 2020
ISBN: 978-1-9821-3888-2
Page Count: 352
Publisher: Scribner
Review Posted Online: Dec. 22, 2019
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 15, 2020
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
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