Emery (Lament for Bonnie, 2016, etc.) populates 1995 Belfast so conscientiously and evokes its atmosphere so faithfully that...
Halifax attorney Monty Collins and his wife, professor Maura MacNeil, come to Ireland just in time to sink neck-deep in the latest round of the Troubles.
The beginning of 1995 finds Monty’s Dublin-born friend, Father Brennan Burke, visiting his Belfast relatives at the same time that Monty’s been embedded in a Belfast law firm. Their closeness brings the two old friends together, but not necessarily in the best ways. Although Monty’s been placed temporarily with Ellison Whiteside to do some boring commercial work, the departure of one of EW’s associates one step ahead of the law leaves a number of his criminal cases hanging, and Monty eagerly accepts the invitation to step into the breach. In the meantime, he’s been importuned by Katie Flanagan to find out what happened to her father, Eamon Flanagan, who supposedly drowned three years ago after a fall from the Ammon Road Bridge on the same night that Provo soldier Fritzy O’Dwyer was shot to death very close by. Although Monty wants no part of a case bound to earn him the enmity of either the Loyalists or the Unionists, he seems unable to help learning further details that scream coverup. Brennan, for his part, has grown close enough to his cousin Ronan Burke’s family that Ronan’s son Tomás confesses to him a murder he committed and asks both absolution and Brennan’s help in retrieving the murder weapon, which he hurriedly left years ago in a hiding place that’s all too vulnerable. The plot to recover the rifle predictably goes wrong, leaving Brennan hanging out to dry just as Monty has raised enough hackles to get himself and his friends gently but firmly threatened if he doesn’t drop the Flanagan case. The determination of each of the two old friends to protect the other by keeping him in ignorance ends up backfiring in a spectacular way.
Emery (Lament for Bonnie, 2016, etc.) populates 1995 Belfast so conscientiously and evokes its atmosphere so faithfully that the historical background ends up swallowing the plot she’s devised, which for all its twists and turns can’t possibly compete with the Troubles.Pub Date: Oct. 16, 2018
ISBN: 978-1-77041-386-3
Page Count: 480
Publisher: ECW Press
Review Posted Online: July 30, 2018
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 15, 2018
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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