Set against the historical backdrop of a city teeming with immigrants, Overholt’s second reveals the evils of a heinous...
A psychiatrist’s inquiries bring her up against the white slave trade.
Dr. Genevieve Summerford has already broken many boundaries by becoming a physician in early 20th-century New York (A Deadly Affection, 2012). Her wealthy parents are still not reconciled to her ongoing friendship with their former stableboy, Simon Shaw, now a Tammany captain who uses his position to do good in some of Manhattan’s poorest neighborhoods. Genevieve, who’s in love with Simon and hopes he returns her love, spends time helping with his boys' club, and as the book opens, she's watching his team row in a race on the East River. Simon’s boat is forced to drop out of the contest when the dead body of a young Italian woman dressed only in a coat and her underwear is spotted under a pier and they have to help drag her to shore. Genevieve becomes caught up in the investigation when a girl at the scene begs her to ask the police to find Teresa Casoria, a friend of hers who came from Italy to get married, got off the ship, and vanished. It turns out that the dead woman, Lucia Siavo, also came to New York to get married, which makes Genevieve worry about Teresa's fate. She meets Teresa's fiance, Antonio Fabroni, who tells her he was late getting to the pier, and Teresa wasn't there when he arrived. Someone else more punctual is evidently meeting young women off the boat, kidnapping them, and forcing them into prostitution. Though it’s not easy getting information from the fearful, closemouthed immigrants, Genevieve finds an ally in a brave young woman who stands outside brothels illegally passing out contraceptives. Genevieve’s investigation clearly puts her in danger despite her high social position, but she presses on, learning a great deal about her own inner demons, her feelings for Simon, and man’s inhumanity to woman before the complicated case is finally resolved.
Set against the historical backdrop of a city teeming with immigrants, Overholt’s second reveals the evils of a heinous trade that still goes on today.Pub Date: Aug. 8, 2017
ISBN: 978-1-4926-3739-4
Page Count: 384
Publisher: Sourcebooks Landmark
Review Posted Online: June 5, 2017
Kirkus Reviews Issue: June 15, 2017
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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