A visionary, futuristic police procedural that buzzes with imagination and intrigue.
A veteran detective struggles to solve the defining case of his career in McBee’s novel.
The investigations of 13-year FBI special agent Juan McCormack have hit a critical roadblock. Despite the fact that he’s apprehended 12 serial killers in North America, no one on the force will acknowledge the connections he’s drawn between them. The novel is set in a future in which tech advancements allow texts and email messages to be read in one’s peripheral vision, palm-embedded keys can unlock doors, and, most notably, Consensual Visage Projectors can change a person’s outward appearance and what they view, smell, or feel. The detective thinks that someone is hacking into and manipulating CVP technology and forcing people to kill others. However, McCormack is unceremoniously fired after being framed for insubordination, and his case histories are erased. Forced to investigate the case independently, the ex-FBI agent teams up with Dominique “Dee” Fydorova, one of the only manipulated killers to survive after murdering her victim. Together with other tech experts, they sift through digital footprints, skirt police surveillance, examines code fragments and data dumps, and avoid the digital assassin trying to hijack their implants. McBee’s prose keeps up with the fierce momentum of his plot as McCormack digs deeper into the unsolved murders and scrambles to apprehend the killer before he and Dee become the next to die. The book thoroughly explores the theme of technological manipulation as the characters battle unseen digital threats and the exploitation of citizens for monetary gain. Mystery fans and tech-savvy readers will find this multilayered combination of an SF novel, a suspense yarn, and a technothriller to be a cut above others of its ilk.
A visionary, futuristic police procedural that buzzes with imagination and intrigue.Pub Date: Aug. 22, 2023
ISBN: 9781639889716
Page Count: 360
Publisher: Atmosphere Press
Review Posted Online: Jan. 5, 2024
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 15, 2024
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
Middling for this stellar series, which makes it another must-read, preferably in one sitting.
Unbeknownst to each other, Wyoming Fish and Game Warden Joe Pickett and outlaw falconer Nate Romanowski embark on equally urgent pursuits that converge in a way neither of them suspects.
Nate, who’s been off the grid ever since his wife, Liv, was killed in a fire intended to kill him too in Three-Inch Teeth (2024), has sworn vengeance on murderous conspirator Axel Soledad. After shooting several of Soledad’s hirelings, he joins forces with his friend and fellow Special Forces vet Geronimo Jones, who’s tracked him down, to chase his quarry deep into the woods. Governor Spencer Rulon, meanwhile, has pressed Joe into service once again to find veteran hunting guide Spike Rankin and his new assistant, Mark Eisele, who just happens to be Rulon’s son-in-law. Although nobody’s heard from the men for two days, the governor doesn’t want his wife and daughter to know they’re missing, and that means not alerting the media or the local sheriff, who’s no fan of Rulon’s anyway. Readers who’ve already seen Rankin and Eisele overpowered and imprisoned by a mysterious crew they ran into while they were setting up for the elk hunting season will assume that Soledad is behind their kidnapping as well. But Box will keep everyone guessing about exactly how Soledad and the ragtag military cult he’s gathered around him plan to confront the military-industrial complex he’s persuaded them is a clear and present danger. You know you’re in for a wild ride when Joe, saying goodbye to Marybeth, his long-suffering wife, promises her, “I’ll do my job and not cross the line.”
Middling for this stellar series, which makes it another must-read, preferably in one sitting.Pub Date: Feb. 25, 2025
ISBN: 9780593851050
Page Count: 384
Publisher: Putnam
Review Posted Online: Jan. 18, 2025
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 15, 2025
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