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When Killers Collide

Name: When Killers Collide
Author: Tom Olsinski
ISBN: 978-1-941859-38-4

by Tom Olsinski ‧ RELEASE DATE: Oct. 2, 2015

A deliberately convoluted detective tale that occasionally stumbles but consistently delights.

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The presence of a potential terrorist group and a serial killer’s return amp up two private investigators’ deceptively simple caseload in this thriller.

Harry Powell may have made the right call when informing cops of Larry Janakowsky’s dead body at the New York hotel where Harry works security. His boss, however, promptly fires him, apparently for calling her at night. Janakowsky had been a private eye in Wilmington, North Carolina, the same place where Bernie Mannion asks Harry to help at his private detective agency. Janakowsky’s scrawled note, meanwhile, seems to associate armed forces–protesting radicals, the Military Liberation Front, with an upcoming Wilmington July 4th celebration. Sure enough, the group’s in North Carolina and includes David Dodd, a Marine who may be court-martialed for involving himself with government protesters. (Bernie’s looking into that via client —and David’s lawyer—JD Henzlein.) The mysterious death of Col. Bogart, reputedly spearheading the court-martial, is certainly suspicious. Meanwhile, missing girls who are turning up dead share similarities with recently uncovered skeletal remains of 12 women in Lebanon, Indiana, buried for nearly a decade. Only readers know that serial killer Lloyd Curtin, now a Wilmington resident, is methodically choosing his victims. Bernie’s finding his office ransacked and Harry’s dodging gunshots must mean that the gumshoes are getting close to exposing a killer—or terrorists. Olsinski (Death by RX, 2009) creates an intricate web connecting characters and subplots. Though they rely on happenstance too often, the links generate endless surprises. Lloyd, for one, is blood-related to a significant character, while David’s Army sister Carolyn once had a relationship with Harry. Characters are equally complex, with some, like Harry and Carolyn, with tragedies in their pasts. Others are darkly humorous: Lloyd, proud of his pirate ancestry, is upset the media’s dubbed him the Goat Man; the Lebanon bodies were found near a goat farm. Notable mistakes unfortunately mar the narrative: conflicting reports put the Indiana victims’ ages at all under 30 and also late 20s to early 30s; and Bernie tells colleagues his Lebanon cop nephew Robert is his cousin. Nevertheless, the book ends on a high note, a realistic conclusion in which not every murder is solved.

A deliberately convoluted detective tale that occasionally stumbles but consistently delights.

Pub Date: Oct. 2, 2015

ISBN: 978-1-941859-38-4

Page Count: 302

Publisher: Pegasus

Review Posted Online: July 7, 2016

Review Program: Kirkus Indie

Categories:

GENERAL FICTION

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TO KILL A MOCKINGBIRD

by Harper Lee ‧ RELEASE DATE: July 11, 1960

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A first novel, this is also a first person account of Scout's (Jean Louise) recall of the years that led to the ending of a mystery, the breaking of her brother Jem's elbow, the death of her father's enemy — and the close of childhood years. A widower, Atticus raises his children with legal dispassion and paternal intelligence, and is ably abetted by Calpurnia, the colored cook, while the Alabama town of Maycomb, in the 1930's, remains aloof to their divergence from its tribal patterns. Scout and Jem, with their summer-time companion, Dill, find their paths free from interference — but not from dangers; their curiosity about the imprisoned Boo, whose miserable past is incorporated in their play, results in a tentative friendliness; their fears of Atticus' lack of distinction is dissipated when he shoots a mad dog; his defense of a Negro accused of raping a white girl, Mayella Ewell, is followed with avid interest and turns the rabble whites against him. Scout is the means of averting an attack on Atticus but when he loses the case it is Boo who saves Jem and Scout by killing Mayella's father when he attempts to murder them. The shadows of a beginning for black-white understanding, the persistent fight that Scout carries on against school, Jem's emergence into adulthood, Calpurnia's quiet power, and all the incidents touching on the children's "growing outward" have an attractive starchiness that keeps this southern picture pert and provocative. There is much advance interest in this book; it has been selected by the Literary Guild and Reader's Digest; it should win many friends.

Pub Date: July 11, 1960

ISBN: 0060935464

Page Count: 323

Publisher: Lippincott

Review Posted Online: Oct. 7, 2011

Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 1, 1960

Categories:

GENERAL FICTION

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DISTANT SHORES

by Kristin Hannah ‧ RELEASE DATE: July 1, 2002

Soft-focus story moves right along with few surprises. This time around, Hannah avoids the soap-opera complications of her...

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Another middle-aged mom in a muddle.

After years of false starts and big hopes, Elizabeth’s ruggedly handsome husband Jack, a former football star, just landed a spot as a sportscaster on national news. He still loves her, even though much younger women are giving him come-hither looks. Heck, he doesn’t want to betray the love of his life after she helped him kick drugs and stuck by him even when he was a struggling has-been. And won’t it seem hypocritical if he fools around with his sexy assistant while he does in-depth reporting on a rape case involving a famous basketball center? Well, he fools around anyway. Elizabeth, nicknamed Birdie, knows nothing of this, but she withdraws from Jack when her hard-drinking, salt-of-the-earth father has a stroke and dies. Now no one will call her “sugar beet” ever again. Time to return home to Tennessee and contend with Anita, the sort-of-evil stepmother so trashy she wears pink puffy slippers all day long. Naturally, it turns out that Anita actually has a heart of gold and knows a few things about Birdie’s dead mother that were hushed up for years. Mom was an artist, just like Birdie, and an old scandal comes to light as Anita unrolls a vibrant canvas that portrays her secret lover. Perhaps, Birdie muses, her mother died of heartbreak, never having followed her true love or developed her talent. Has she, too, compromised everything she holds dear? Hoping to find out, Birdie joins a support group that promises to reconnect confused women with their passion. She and Jack separate, prompting a how-dare-you fit from their grown daughters. Will Birdie fly her empty nest? Will she go back to college for a degree in art? Will her brooding watercolors ever sell?

Soft-focus story moves right along with few surprises. This time around, Hannah avoids the soap-opera complications of her previous tales (Summer Island, 2001, etc.).