An action-packed tale of organized crime and familial ties.
A man allows his job as a bookie to affect the lives of his daughter and granddaughter in Harding’s novel.
Donnie “The Book” Chariot is a genius with numbers. His affinity for calculating probability has made him a legendary bookie covering the action on horse-race betting. Unfortunately, Donnie has early-onset Alzheimer’s, and he cannot determine the likelihood of a given outcome as easily as he once could. When his clients start complaining that they are losing money as a result of his bad picks, Donnie tries to enlist the help of his daughter, Donna—who shares a similar gift for mathematics—to help him in his work. Initially, due to their strained relationship, Donna refuses, only capitulating after her own daughter, Alexis, is kidnapped. Later, another pair of goons home in on Alexis’ kidnapping—this escalates the situation, leading to Donna's inadvertently teaming up with her father’s henchmen, Frank and Nicky, in a race to get her daughter back. Though the numbers and the degree of detail pertaining to gambling on horses may be a bit niche for some readers, the author’s tale has no shortage of thrills and drama to balance the more obscure material out. The strongest sections of the narrative are the rawer moments between characters, including Donna’s attempts to discuss her horrific childhood memories with her father (“You should have let all this lunacy go a long time ago. Tried being a husband or, I don’t know, maybe something real exotic, like a dad”). Similarly, Nicky’s feelings for Donna add depth to his character, elevating him above the level of some anonymous gangster underling. Harding’s prose is accessible and fast-paced though not particularly descriptive. There are a few too many characters, many of whom have very similar names, which can be confusing and make the story feel a bit cluttered at times. Aside from this minor flaw, the narrative is a well-crafted offering for lovers of crime thrillers and is a unique take on the typical gangster tale.
An action-packed tale of organized crime and familial ties.Pub Date: Aug. 10, 2023
ISBN: 9781685132927
Page Count: 316
Publisher: Black Rose Writing
Review Posted Online: April 19, 2023
Kirkus Reviews Issue: June 1, 2023
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
Expert, but unsurprising.
The death of an old friend who was more than a friend sends Dr. Kay Scarpetta down her latest rabbit hole.
If every body tells a story, the corpse of 7-year-old Luna Briley sings the blues. On top of the many signs of ongoing physical abuse, there’s the fatal gunshot wound to her head. Ryder and Piper Briley, the wealthy and powerful parents who didn’t call the police until after their daughter died, insist that Luna’s death was an accident, or maybe a suicide. Scarpetta doesn’t think so, and her refusal to release the body to the Brileys’ hand-picked mortician moves them to legal action against her as Virginia’s chief medical examiner. You’d think it would be a relief to put this case aside for another when Scarpetta’s niece, Secret Service agent Lucy Farinelli, calls her and ferries her by helicopter to an abandoned Oz theme park owned by Ryder Briley, but this one’s even more heartbreaking. Scarpetta is there to examine the body of astrophysicist Sal Giordano, her close friend and former lover, who was evidently kidnapped, held in captivity for several hours, and tossed out of an unidentified aircraft. The leading suspects are the Brileys; Carrie Grethen, Lucy’s sociopathic ex-lover, with whom Scarpetta has repeatedly tangled in the past; and the UFO that dumped Giordano’s body without leaving the usual traces for air-traffic technologies to pick up. The multiple rounds of physical examinations Scarpetta conducts on both victims are every bit as meticulous and gripping as fans would expect; the killer’s identity is neither surprising nor interesting, but Cornwell juggles her trademark forensics, and the paranormal hints she’s become increasingly invested in, more dexterously than usual.
Expert, but unsurprising.Pub Date: Oct. 8, 2024
ISBN: 9781538770382
Page Count: 400
Publisher: Grand Central Publishing
Review Posted Online: Aug. 29, 2024
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Oct. 1, 2024
BOOK TO SCREEN
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
© 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.
