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
More perhaps than any of Connelly’s much-honored other titles, this one reveals why his procedurals are the most soulful in...
The 30th novel by the creator of Harry Bosch (The Wrong Side of Goodbye, 2016, etc.) and the Lincoln Lawyer (The Gods of Guilt, 2013, etc.) introduces an LAPD detective fighting doggedly for justice for herself and a wide array of victims.
Ever since her partner, Detective Ken Chastain, failed to back up her sexual harassment claim against Lt. Robert Olivas, her supervisor at the Robbery Homicide Division, Renée Ballard has been banished to the midnight shift—the late show. She’s kept her chin down and worked her cases, most of which are routinely passed on to the day shifts, without complaints or recriminations. But that all ends the night she and Detective John Jenkins, the partner who’s running on empty, are called to The Dancers, a nightclub where five people have been shot dead. Three of them—a bookie, a drug dealer, and a rumored mob enforcer—are no great loss, but Ballard can’t forget Cynthia Haddel, the young woman serving drinks while she waited for her acting career to take off. The case naturally falls to Olivas, who humiliatingly shunts Ballard aside. But she persists in following leads during her time off even though she’d already caught another case earlier the same night, the brutal assault on Ramona Ramone, ne Ramón Gutierrez, a trans hooker beaten nearly to death who mumbles something about “the upside-down house” before lapsing into a coma. Despite, or because of, the flak she gets from across the LAPD, Ballard soldiers on, horrified but energized when Chastain is gunned down only a few hours after she tells him off for the way he let her down two years ago. She’ll run into layers of interference, get kidnapped herself, expose a leak in the department, kill a man, and find some wholly unexpected allies before she claps the cuffs on the killer in a richly satisfying conclusion.
More perhaps than any of Connelly’s much-honored other titles, this one reveals why his procedurals are the most soulful in the business: because he finds the soul in the smallest details, faithfully executed.Pub Date: July 18, 2017
ISBN: 978-0-316-22598-4
Page Count: 400
Publisher: Little, Brown
Review Posted Online: June 19, 2017
Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 1, 2017
BOOK TO SCREEN
Leisurely, conscientiously plotted, smoothly written, and more surprising in its details than its larger arc.
A fatal accident that tangles the fates of three ill-assorted people when two cars crash into each other outside a Gloucester village raises urgent questions about the living.
Hours after being ejected from the Lamb, Viv Holland’s pub in Lower Slaughter, her former boss Fergus O’Reilly, who’s turned up without warning and pressed her to take a new job 12 years after she quit his Michelin-rated Chelsea restaurant, is found dead after a collision outside the village. Nor is he the only victim: Nell Greene, the Lamb patron who’d picked up Fergus when she saw him walking uncertainly along the road to drive him to the hospital, has also died at the scene. And there’s evidence that Fergus was fatally poisoned even before the crash. The Met’s Detective Superintendent Duncan Kincaid and his wife, DI Gemma James, are on hand to investigate because they’ve accepted an invitation to stay at Beck House, the home of DS Melody Talbot’s wealthy parents, Sir Ivan and Lady Adelaide Talbot, for whom Viv has agreed to cater an elaborate charity luncheon. But Kincaid, who was driving the car Nell struck and survived the collision only to see Nell die as he looked on helplessly, isn’t himself either physically or mentally, and the solution seems a long way off. There’ll be another murder, a series of increasingly revealing flashbacks to Viv’s stint at O’Reilly’s 12 years ago, and endless updates on the sexual histories of the suspects with the victims, each other, and the police. Through it all, Kincaid and Gemma (Garden of Lamentations, 2017, etc.) keep stiff upper lips even when the dark revelations reach into Beck House.
Leisurely, conscientiously plotted, smoothly written, and more surprising in its details than its larger arc.Pub Date: Oct. 8, 2019
ISBN: 978-0-06-227166-2
Page Count: 384
Publisher: Morrow/HarperCollins
Review Posted Online: July 14, 2019
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 1, 2019
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