A sentimental caper that mostly follows the genre formula, with a few refreshingly original flourishes.
Los Angeles detective Tom Logan investigates the death of a troubled movie starlet in this sequel, his second noir set during Hollywood’s golden age.
It’s 1931, and the City of Angels is in the midst of its most celebrated period: the studio era, which isn’t always kind to young actresses or honest cops. After ruffling too many feathers during a high-profile case, Logan, a no-nonsense gumshoe full of snark, was forced to resign from the LAPD. With Logan now a private eye, one of his newest clients turns into a beautiful corpse overnight—as pretty girls are wont to do in hard-boiled murder mysteries. A security guard discovers the body of Gertrude Hurd, a platinum blonde in the mold of Marilyn Monroe, on the steps outside her Malibu apartment. Logan initially fingers local mob boss Armando Scaparetti, one of Gertie’s many ex-boyfriends; after all, just a few days before her death, she came to Logan looking for protection from the infamous gangster with ties to the movie studios. But in author Piazza’s (The Curse of the Crimson Dragon, 2012, etc.) fresh spin, prime suspect Scaparetti then hires the detective himself to solve the mystery. Aided by his plucky secretary-turned-girlfriend, Rita, and the nearly unintelligible Irish police officer Red Clancy, Logan uncovers Gertie’s secret life behind the camera, including drugs, seedy male acquaintances and romantic rivals. As the web of suspects widens and the evidence of corruption rises all the way up to City Hall, another dead body appears. Earnest and dutiful, the narrative aims for the minimalist prose of Raymond Chandler but often channels the overly procedural narrator of noir B-movies. And though more concerned with nostalgia than invention, the plot hits the right notes as it crescendos toward a well-orchestrated coda.
A sentimental caper that mostly follows the genre formula, with a few refreshingly original flourishes.Pub Date: July 16, 2013
ISBN: 978-1482344387
Page Count: 446
Publisher: CreateSpace
Review Posted Online: Sept. 26, 2013
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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