The third action-packed case for Manny (Death Where the Bad Rocks Live, 2012, etc.) teems with historical interest, even if...
A vacation visit leads to a nasty murder case for FBI agent Manny Tanno.
Manny and his police officer friend Willie With Horn, of the Pine Ridge Reservation, are enjoying the Real Bird Little Big Horn Reenactment on the Crow Agency Reservation when one of the re-enactors is shot. Although it looks like an accident, someone has been caught on tape changing the blanks for real ammunition, making it a case for Manny. What first appears to be simple gets very complicated as the bodies pile up. Local auctioneer Harlan White Bird had been given the fabulous Beauchamp collection of Native American artifacts to sell. The most valuable item in the collection is the journal of Levi Star Dancer, a scout for Custer. Now, Harlan is dead, and the journal is missing, along with Harlan’s drinking buddy, Vietnam vet Sam Star Dancer. Sam’s sister Chenoa is not only a wealthy rancher, but a stunning woman whose image has been used in many Montana publicity campaigns. Chenoa’s husband, Cubby, may be a former rodeo star, but that evidently doesn’t keep Chenoa from an affair with Wilson Eagle Bull, a powerful Lakota with political ambitions. Another missing pal of Harlan’s and Sam’s who turns up dead is Itchy, a meth-addicted Crow. When yet another body is found in Sam’s burned-out house, Chenoa is more concerned with recovering the journal, which contains information potentially damaging to both her and Eagle Bull, than with the death of her alcoholic brother. Once Willie is shot while looking for the killer, Manny doesn’t care whose toes he steps on to uncover the truth.
The third action-packed case for Manny (Death Where the Bad Rocks Live, 2012, etc.) teems with historical interest, even if you’re not a re-enactor.Pub Date: June 4, 2013
ISBN: 978-0-425-26325-9
Page Count: 384
Publisher: Berkley Prime Crime
Review Posted Online: April 13, 2013
Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 1, 2013
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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