A high-casualty quest to identify a killer who can’t help being a disappointment.
A professional-style execution in front of 20,000 witnesses kicks off a sixth walk on the wild side for Pittsburgh psychologist Daniel Rinaldi.
The Teasdale Tiger, the beloved mascot of Teasdale College, is shot and killed as Rinaldi, college dean Martin Hobbs, and thousands of football fans look on. The only apparent flaw in the sniper’s crime is that the man inside the tiger costume isn’t Jason Graham, the usual mascot, but Lucas Hartley, who paid Jason $500 to let him take his place to impress his girlfriend. Sgt. Harry Polk, of the Pittsburgh police, has hardly time to wonder whether the wrong man was killed when the sniper changes venues to murder bookkeeper Harriet Parr, attorney Peter Steinman, city councilman Gary Landrew, physician Francis Mapes, and then, in an act that would be more shocking if readers weren’t already numb, Martin Hobbs. Invited to join the task force trying to figure out whether these victims have anything in common that would allow the police to predict the Steel City Sniper’s next move and then abruptly terminated over his relationship with assistant dean Indra Bishara, who seems to be competing with her well-connected ex-husband, William Reynolds III, over which of them can behave worse, Danny, “who ain’t on the job but acts like he is,” persists in working the case even as every suspect in the task force’s lineup turns into the next victim. The discovery that most of the deceased were members of the De Gobineau Society darkens the mystery without resolving it; only a ticking-clock showdown will do that.
A high-casualty quest to identify a killer who can’t help being a disappointment.Pub Date: Sept. 1, 2021
ISBN: 978-1-4642-1345-8
Page Count: 270
Publisher: Poisoned Pen
Review Posted Online: June 1, 2021
Kirkus Reviews Issue: June 15, 2021
Better set aside several uninterrupted hours for this toxic rocket. You’ll be glad you did.
A successful Vermont podcaster who’s elicited confessions from dozens of criminals finds herself on the other side of the table, in the hottest of hot seats, over her own troubled past.
Poe Webb was only 13 when she saw her mother, Margaret McMillian, get stabbed to death by the man she’d picked up for a quickie. Poe had vowed revenge, but how could a kid find and avenge herself on a stranger who’d vanished as quickly as he appeared? In the long years since then, Poe’s made a name for herself as a top true-crime podcaster who routinely invites her guests to tell her audience exactly what they did. Now, she’s being pressed, and pressed hard, by Ian Hindley, whose fake name echoes those of England’s Moors Murderers, to join him in a livestream her fans will find riveting because, as Hindley tells her, he’s actually Leopold Hutchins, the pickup who stabbed her mother 14 times when she failed to use her safe word. Skeptical? Hindley knows endless details about the killing that were never released by the police. If Poe won’t do the broadcast, Hindley threatens to harm everyone she loves: her father; her producer and lover, Kip Nguyen; and her black Lab, Bailey. And there’s one more complication that makes the pressure on Poe even more unbearable. Seven years ago, against all odds, she succeeded in tracking Leopold Hutchins from Burlington to New York and killing him herself. In fact, it’s that murder that Hindley most wants her to talk about. Which bully is more fearsome, the man who’s threatening her or the man she killed?
Better set aside several uninterrupted hours for this toxic rocket. You’ll be glad you did.Pub Date: Jan. 14, 2025
ISBN: 9781464226229
Page Count: 448
Publisher: Poisoned Pen
Review Posted Online: Nov. 9, 2024
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Dec. 15, 2024
Forget the tangled backstory, focus on the game of cat and mouse, and enjoy.
Lt. Eve Dallas and her colleagues in the New York Police and Security Department step outside their comfort zone into counterterrorism.
Back in 2024, during the stressful time of the Urban Wars, a courageous band calling themselves The Twelve fought Dominion and other violent fringe groups that sought to end civilization as we know it, despite the presence of a traitor in their own midst. Now, 37 years later, someone’s killed Giovanni Rossi, a retired cybersecurity expert who was one of The Twelve, an hour or so after a summons—ostensibly from another veteran of the group—brought him from Rome to New York. On the body, officers called to the scene find a copy of Dallas’ business card that’s been embellished with a flamboyant threat to annihilate the seven surviving members of The Twelve. Obligingly inviting all seven to New York—a move you’d think would make it a lot easier for their nemesis to wipe them all out at once—Dallas soon forms a theory about the killer’s identity and sets a trap to draw him out. But her plan turns into a narrow miss, upping the stakes on both sides, for now the killer knows Dallas is on to him. It’s in the nature of the case that there’s less mystery and detection than usual in this long-running franchise—the biggest surprise turns out to be the connection between Dallas and her quarry—but the thrills keep on coming, and the final interrogation, though highly predictable in its broad outlines, is as satisfying as ever.
Forget the tangled backstory, focus on the game of cat and mouse, and enjoy.Pub Date: Feb. 4, 2025
ISBN: 9781250370792
Page Count: 368
Publisher: St. Martin's
Review Posted Online: Nov. 23, 2024
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 1, 2025
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