Figuring out which river is in which state is just the beginning of readers’ frustration, as Groundwater squanders her...
A late-season rafting trip spells trouble for a river ranger doubling as an adventure tour guide.
Mandy Tanner (Wicked Eddies, 2012, etc.) still spends her summers patrolling the Arkansas River in her home state of Colorado. But she and fiance Rob Juarez want so much to build up the client base of their fledgling RM Outdoor Adventures that they take a group on an October rafting/mountaineering trip down the Colorado River, which happens to be in Utah. To accommodate the climbers, they add Tom “Cool” O’Day to RM regulars Gonzo and Kendra. This late in the season, the placid waters of Lake Powell and the whitewater of Cataract Canyon will be so deserted that Mandy hopes the dozen hardy souls signed up for the tour get along. They don’t. West Coast multicultural gal pals Betsy, Mo and Viv are fine. They spend most of their time in their tent drinking box wine. Tina Norton, however, had the bright idea of inviting both of her divorced parents on the trip, and geology professor Elsa can’t help sniping mercilessly at her wimpy ex, Paul. The Andersons may be even worse. Out-of-shape parents Hal and Diana expect an outdoor Ritz Carlton, complete with valet service. Adult children Alice, Amy and Alex squabble. Amy’s husband, Les Williams, is a braggart and a bully. When Alex is mauled to death by a marauding bear, the trip swiftly spirals out of control. With their radio busted and no one on the trails to call for help, the RM crew has no choice other than to continue until they reach their designated take-out point at the end of Cataract. But naturalist Mo’s observation that the claw marks found on Alex aren’t the ones you’d expect from the canyon’s native black bears set Mandy on edge with fears of still more destruction ahead.
Figuring out which river is in which state is just the beginning of readers’ frustration, as Groundwater squanders her opportunities for complex interactions among interesting characters, focusing instead on how her heroine’s virtue shines imperishably through.Pub Date: June 8, 2013
ISBN: 978-0-7387-3482-8
Page Count: 288
Publisher: Midnight Ink/Llewellyn
Review Posted Online: April 15, 2013
Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 1, 2013
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 2024 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.
