A bit messy, but perhaps required to recalibrate this deservedly popular series for future volumes.
After losing her dream job as Bergen County deputy sheriff, Constance Kopp regroups at a Maryland Army camp for women on the eve of World War I.
In the fifth installment of her feisty, fact-based series (Miss Kopp Just Won’t Quit, 2018, etc.), Stewart throws an additional real-life figure into the fictional mix: Beulah Binford, fleeing a notorious past in Richmond and thinking that training to support the troops will be her ticket to a new life in France—if only no one recognizes her. What precisely Beulah is trying to hide is the only sort-of mystery here, and her memories leading up to that revelation form a substantial part of the novel. Though her story is fairly interesting, it does give Stewart less room for the Kopp sisters. That may be just as well, since Norma’s efforts to persuade the Army of the value of carrier pigeons is neither as interesting nor as funny as Stewart seems to think, and Fleurette’s stage-struck self-absorption is a slightly shopworn trait, though it is fun to see Beulah taking tart notice of it. Constance, who reluctantly assumes command of the camp after an injury sidelines her predecessor, dismisses the training deemed suitable for ladies as “a game” and secretly instructs a small group of equally determined women in the use of real guns. But she’s still brooding over her vanished opportunity in law enforcement, and a bit of a bore about it too, until Beulah proves the worth of her insertion into the series by forcefully (but not unsympathetically) urging Constance to make her own opportunities. A slam-bang finale mostly compensates for the fuzzy focus of this installment: Constance’s unorthodox training is triumphantly justified, and Norma wins a high-ranking ally for her pigeons. Plenty of loose ends are dangled for future volumes as Constance and Beulah both make peace with their pasts and plans to move forward.
A bit messy, but perhaps required to recalibrate this deservedly popular series for future volumes.Pub Date: Sept. 17, 2019
ISBN: 978-1-328-73652-9
Page Count: 368
Publisher: Houghton Mifflin Harcourt
Review Posted Online: June 30, 2019
Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 15, 2019
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
© Copyright 2025 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.
