Another impressive case featuring a detective who remains not only dogged, but also reflective.
This 16th installment of a series brings back a thinking-person’s private investigator in a tale that delivers the unlikely combination of robotics innovation and gender identity.
In this thriller, Owen McKenna, the former San Francisco policeman–turned-tourist-town detective, finds himself searching for a very special abducted child. He is hired by Vince Cooper, a mountain guide whose son, Jon, has been kidnapped. Initially, it appears that Jon was taken so that Vince would be forced to lead some men claiming to be from a Swedish prison gang on a dangerous climb to recover something. But after Vince does so, Jon isn’t released. That’s because Jon is a cyber-savant in whom Yardley LaMotte, a missing robotics developer, had taken an interest. Those holding Jon hope he can crack the security on LaMotte’s files, which the gang stole. Through his steadfast investigation of the theft, Owen discovers where Jon is being held: a gated mountaintop lodge. But Jon has a secret: She’s a girl trapped in a boy’s body who calls herself Jonni, something neither her father nor her brutish captors comprehend. To rescue Jonni, Vince and Owen mount a nighttime assault on the lodge via a tandem paraglider skydrop, supported by the sleuth’s Great Dane, Spot, and his off-duty cop buddy Diamond Martinez on the ground. Sure, this rescue mission requires a healthy suspension of disbelief by readers, with a guide perfectly steering a novice paraglider into a gated compound protected by a security system and armed mercenaries. But enough goes wrong that Borg (Tahoe Payback, 2017, etc.) makes the attack seem believable, showing that extreme circumstances require extreme measures. Likewise, the mastermind of the plan to steal LaMotte’s secrets seems unlikely yet ultimately makes sense. But the best part of the successful novel is how Owen and his girlfriend, Street, research Jonni’s gender dysphoria and become her greatest champions as they try to help Vince understand his daughter. Yes, Borg’s books are thrillers first and foremost, with picturesque settings, but they’re educational as well. Having a thoughtful, inquisitive man such as Owen at their centers enhances these volumes. And this latest outing is no exception.
Another impressive case featuring a detective who remains not only dogged, but also reflective.Pub Date: Aug. 6, 2018
ISBN: 978-1-931296-26-7
Page Count: 352
Publisher: Thriller Press
Review Posted Online: Jan. 3, 2019
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 1, 2019
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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