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
Eskens’ debut is a solid and thoughtful tale of a young man used to taking on burdens beyond his years—none more dangerous...
A struggling student’s English assignment turns into a mission to solve a 30-year-old murder.
Joe Talbert has had very few breaks in his 21 years. The son of a single and very alcoholic mother, he’s worked hard to save enough money to leave his home in Austin, Minnesota, for the University of Minnesota. Although he has to leave his autistic younger brother, Jeremy Naylor, to the dubious care of their mother, Joe is determined to beat the odds and get his degree. For an assignment in his English class, he decides to interview Carl Iverson, a man convicted of raping and killing a 14-year-old girl. Carl, who maintains his innocence, is dying of cancer and has been released to a nursing home to end his life in lonely but unrepentant pain. The more Joe learns about Carl—a Vietnam vet with two Purple Hearts and a Silver Cross—the more the young man questions the conviction. Joe’s plan to write a short biography and earn an easy A turns into something more. Even after his mother is arrested for drunk driving and guilt-trips Joe into ransacking his college fund to bail her out, he soldiers on with the project, though her irresponsibility forces him to take Jeremy into his care. But it’s his younger brother who cracks the code of the long-dead murder victim’s secret diary and an attractive neighbor, Lila Nash, who has her own agenda for helping Joe solve the mystery, whatever the risk.
Eskens’ debut is a solid and thoughtful tale of a young man used to taking on burdens beyond his years—none more dangerous than championing a bitter old man convicted of a horrific crime.Pub Date: Oct. 14, 2014
ISBN: 978-1-61614-998-7
Page Count: 300
Publisher: Seventh Street Books
Review Posted Online: Oct. 8, 2014
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Oct. 15, 2014
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