A modest but effective thriller with a protagonist who has the potential for his own series.
In Basinski’s debut thriller, a murder aboard a cruise ship may not be so simple to solve for a retired Los Angeles Police Department lieutenant, especially when there’s no body.
Former cop Lt. Mario Morales, head of security on the Mardi Gras, is awakened by a guard who claims there’s been a murder. Robert Weigand, on his honeymoon, believes wife Linda is dead since he can’t find her anywhere. Morales doesn’t make much headway in his investigation before the ship docks in Miami, finding no evidence of foul play—or a corpse. But once the feds take over the case on land, they quickly name and arrest a suspect—the newlyweds’ boss, car dealer Joe Hugo, who bankrolled and joined the couple on their trip. Morales, however, thinks a Chinese businessman’s interest in the bankrupt cruise line Mariner may have played a part in the nefarious events onboard. The novel opens with an exquisite atmosphere: the Mardi Gras, now the site of a possible murder, floats still in the water, shrouded by fog. Scenes depicting the ship’s innately claustrophobic setting are terrific but disappointingly few, since the vessel reaches shore well before the story’s over. Nevertheless, Basinski takes the time to develop characters introduced during the cruise: Sun Li, an enigmatic woman who knows about Linda’s murder before other passengers, and attorney Bud Gorley, who never even boards the Mardi Gras and first appears in flashback. Mysteries surrounding these characters all come to light as Morales sets out to prove Joe’s innocence. Morales is a likable protagonist, a levelheaded man who considers every possibility. Unfortunately, he’s a bit lacking as an investigator. A few significant things he does in Miami, such as peruse the ship’s surveillance tapes, he could have just as easily done onboard. But he does ask endless questions—a sure sign that the steely man won’t stop until he finds a solution.
A modest but effective thriller with a protagonist who has the potential for his own series.Pub Date: Feb. 27, 2015
ISBN: 978-1503270725
Page Count: 248
Publisher: CreateSpace
Review Posted Online: May 26, 2015
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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