Expect the ending to make you squirm, though you have to admire Camilleri’s ability to disarm horror with his particular...
When you’re a loan shark with an open liking for younger women, the occasional death threat maybe isn’t so alarming.
After finding his father dead, Arturo Barletta is quick to open up about the late Cosimo Barletta’s collection of enemies as well as young lovers. Which, to Inspector Montalbano’s dismay, means that the list of potential murderers is a long one. Hacking away at that list should be top priority, but a man is only human, and distractions pile up for Montalbano: Cosimo’s beautiful daughter, Giovanna, seems intent on gaining his full attention during the investigation, and, at home, a well-spoken vagabond with a mysterious past has made his acquaintance. Montalbano also makes the mistake of mentioning this man to his long-term partner, Livia, who insists on regular updates. A thorough search of Cosimo’s home reveals that he enjoyed keeping records of death threats made against him as well as X-rated photographs of the women he slept with. When blonde hairs are found in Cosimo’s bed, Montalbano hopes to use the photographs to find a match—and that leads him to Stella Lasorella. Of course, she insists she wasn’t there the night of the murder. She also paints a very disturbing picture of her ex-lover—one of manipulation, blackmail, and worse. Cosimo might have felt rich and powerful enough to stay in control, but the details of his murder, as well as one intimate set of letters, suggest he had a weakness. The investigation is not without its humorous moments—the photographs have an overwhelming effect on the poor men who must study them—which are classic for Camilleri (The Revolution of the Moon, 2017, etc.), but it also brings out a vulnerable side to our steadfast investigator. The mind games Montalbano plays with Giovanna will keep the pages turning, and as the more disturbing layers of the case are revealed, even Montalbano is moved to introspection: “His was loneliness crowded by all his colleagues in the police department, but it was still loneliness.”
Expect the ending to make you squirm, though you have to admire Camilleri’s ability to disarm horror with his particular charm; the town of Vigàta quietly soldiers on.Pub Date: Aug. 8, 2017
ISBN: 978-0-14-312665-2
Page Count: 272
Publisher: Penguin
Review Posted Online: May 14, 2017
Kirkus Reviews Issue: June 1, 2017
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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