A quick, enjoyable read for mystery lovers.
In his latest mystery, Cardinale (The Westside Kid, 2009) explores the intersection of violence, romance and family drama.
Julian Case is trying to get his life back on track. Since his wife’s death two years ago, he has thrown himself into maintaining his realty company and some semblance of stability for his family, which is slowly moving forward after their devastating loss. His twin daughters are busy with their own lives: Flo is finishing a degree and falling in love; Frankie, the head of her own household, is considering leaving her stable banking job to become a professional kickboxer. Julian’s son, Leo, is primed to take over the family business, even if he seems more focused on his social life than on closing real estate deals. Only Julian appears to be stuck halfway between his old and new lives. While attending a relative’s wedding in Italy, he meets Alegra, a professor who ignites the possibility of a new love and happiness. But it is not to be. Upon his return home to New Jersey, Julian finds Leo unconscious and bleeding, having been beaten at some point during a party held in his father’s absence (and without permission). Leo falls into a coma, leaving Julian to help solve the mystery of why anyone would want to harm his son and to re-evaluate his own life. Through investigating Leo’s attack, Cardinale explores how losing their matriarch redefined this family’s dynamics as well as Julian’s simultaneous feelings of hope and guilt about the prospect of finally moving on. Although less developed than romantically minded readers might like, Julian’s internal struggle keeps the Alegra subplot at the fore, and Cardinale interweaves it nicely with Leo’s attempted murder. Solid dialogue gives the reader a strong sense of the characters’ personalities, especially that of Leo, who, while central to the mystery, is unconscious for most of the story. But Cardinale occasionally dips into overzealous, descriptive meanderings, as with a scene involving Alegra and her young daughter. Alegra “turned on the radio for some soft music while she prepared dinner. Caprice was in the living room playing a word game on the iPad.” Such additions feel like unnecessary padding to an otherwise strong story.
A quick, enjoyable read for mystery lovers.Pub Date: July 9, 2013
ISBN: 978-1478704966
Page Count: 214
Publisher: Outskirts Press Inc.
Review Posted Online: Dec. 20, 2013
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
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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