Another solid, appealing entry in a series that continues to expand the depth of its characters while keeping the...
A teen killer bent on surgical baby-snatching terrorizes a community in this latest entry in the Astrology Mystery series.
O’Rorke’s (The Capricorn Kidnapping, 2016, etc.) fourth installment finds industrious and charmingly beautiful Washington Tri-Cities juvenile probation officer Christian Vargas in fine form and still brandishing her nearly impeccable conviction track record. Her latest case involves Terry Wilson, a desperate, barren teenager who, after murdering her own mother, now plans to physically extract her former best friend’s unborn baby to raise as her own. Vargas is doubly demonized by a false-positive pregnancy scare and the fact that her detective partner, Daniel O’Callahan, remains indefinitely abroad on an assignment for the U.S. Army in Afghanistan. Rebounding from this absence, she’s open to the romantic advances of persistent county prosecutor Osmund “Oz” Rellim. After Terry viciously carries out her plan to murder her ex-friend Victoria Villanueva in a secluded park, Vargas (and her trusty police dog, Bear) becomes involved and begins piecing together clues from the grim crime scene. A tip from an unruly, jailed juvenile and Bear’s somewhat implausible discovery of an engraved bracelet in the park fill in some case gaps even as a prideful lead detective counsels her to stop meddling in his investigation. Determined as ever, Vargas puts her affinity for justice and unmatched deductive skills to work nevertheless. As demonstrated in previous volumes in the series, O’Rorke is talented at juggling many plot points at once. In this rousing work, she presents melodramatic courtroom antics, a sociopathic suspect, and leads from witnesses frequenting the park where Victoria was killed with equal amounts of descriptive flair, and she tosses a particularly wild and woolly cast of characters into the fray as well. The reappearance of fugitive Jared Sliver, who holds a firm grudge against both Vargas and Daniel, adds even more intrigue to the unfolding murder probe, while another victim narrowly escapes Terry’s clutches. The showdown fizzles somewhat as a fusion of dogged police work and witchcraft struggles for cohesion, but readers should be delighted when Daniel returns to eclipse the romantic progress Oz was hoping would continue.
Another solid, appealing entry in a series that continues to expand the depth of its characters while keeping the crime-solving suspense at a taut level.Pub Date: N/A
ISBN: 978-1-68181-702-6
Page Count: 348
Publisher: Strategic
Review Posted Online: Aug. 10, 2016
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Oct. 1, 2016
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
An undisciplined but powerfully lacerating story, by an author who knows every block of the neighborhood and every hair on...
After five adventures for Boston shamus Patrick Kenzie and his off-again lover Angela Gennaro (Prayers for Rain, 1999, etc.), Lehane tries his hand at a crossover novel that’s as dark as any of Patrick’s cases.
Even the 1975 prologue is bleak. Sean Devine and Jimmy Marcus are playing, or fighting, outside Sean’s parents’ house in the Point neighborhood of East Buckingham when a car pulls up, one of the two men inside flashes a badge, and Sean and Jimmy’s friend Dave Boyle gets bundled inside, allegedly to be driven home to his mother for a scolding but actually to get kidnapped. Though Dave escapes after a few days, he never really outlives his ordeal, and 25 years later it’s Jimmy’s turn to join him in hell when his daughter Katie is shot and beaten to death in the wilds of Pen Park, and State Trooper Sean, just returned from suspension, gets assigned to the case. Sean knows that both Dave and Jimmy have been in more than their share of trouble in the past. And he’s got an especially close eye on Jimmy, whose marriage brought him close to the aptly named Savage family and who’s done hard time for robbery. It would be just like Jimmy, Sean knows, to ignore his friend’s official efforts and go after the killer himself. But Sean would be a lot more worried if he knew what Dave’s wife Celeste knows: that hours after catching sight of Katie in the last bar she visited on the night of her death, Dave staggered home covered with somebody else’s blood. Burrowing deep into his three sorry heroes and the hundred ties that bind them unbearably close, Lehane weaves such a spellbinding tale that it’s easy to overlook the ramshackle mystery behind it all.
An undisciplined but powerfully lacerating story, by an author who knows every block of the neighborhood and every hair on his characters’ heads.Pub Date: Jan. 30, 2001
ISBN: 0-688-16316-5
Page Count: 416
Publisher: Morrow/HarperCollins
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Dec. 15, 2000
One protest from an outraged innocent says it all: “This is America. This is Wyoming.”
Once again, Wyoming game warden Joe Pickett gets mixed up in a killing whose principal suspect is his old friend Nate Romanowski, whose attempts to live off the grid keep breaking down in a series of felony charges.
If Judge Hewitt hadn’t bent over to pick up a spoon that had fallen from his dinner table, the sniper set up nearly a mile from his house in the gated community of the Eagle Mountain Club would have ended his life. As it was, the victim was Sue Hewitt, leaving the judge alive and free to rail and threaten anyone he suspected of the shooting. Incoming Twelve Sleep County Sheriff Brendan Kapelow’s interest in using the case to promote his political ambitions and the judge’s inability to see further than his nose make them the perfect targets for a frame-up of Nate, who just wants to be left alone in the middle of nowhere to train his falcons and help his bride, Liv Brannon, raise their baby, Kestrel. Nor are the sniper, the sheriff, and the judge Nate’s only enemies. Orlando Panfile has been sent to Wyoming by the Sinaloan drug cartel to avenge the deaths of the four assassins whose careers Nate and Joe ended last time out (Wolf Pack, 2019). So it’s up to Joe, with some timely data from his librarian wife, Marybeth, to hire a lawyer for Nate, make sure he doesn’t bust out of jail before his trial, identify the real sniper, who continues to take an active role in the proceedings, and somehow protect him from a killer who regards Nate’s arrest as an unwelcome complication. That’s quite a tall order for someone who can’t shoot straight, who keeps wrecking his state-issued vehicles, and whose appalling mother-in-law, Missy Vankeuren Hand, has returned from her latest European jaunt to suck up all the oxygen in Twelve Sleep County to hustle some illegal drugs for her cancer-stricken sixth husband. But fans of this outstanding series will know better than to place their money against Joe.
One protest from an outraged innocent says it all: “This is America. This is Wyoming.”Pub Date: March 3, 2020
ISBN: 978-0-525-53823-3
Page Count: 368
Publisher: Putnam
Review Posted Online: Jan. 12, 2020
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 1, 2020
© Copyright 2026 Kirkus Media LLC. All Rights Reserved.
Follow
Popular in this Genre
We can’t wait for you to join Kirkus!
It’s free and takes less than 10 seconds!
Already have an account? Log in.
OR
Sign in with GoogleTrouble signing in? Retrieve credentials.
Welcome Back!
OR
Sign in with GoogleTrouble signing in? Retrieve credentials.
