Middling, readable Francis thrills—with a serviceable murder-mystery, some harrowing violence, horses in the background (if not central to the plot), and lots of filler about wilderness-survival literature. The young, plucky, good-hearted hero this time is narrator John Kendall, a travel/survival-writer and would-be novelist who's short of cash—and therefore agrees to write the authorized biography (a likely vanity-press item) of celebrated racehorse trainer Tremayne Vickers. (The job includes room-and-board at the Vickers manse.) Unenthusiastic at first, Kendall warms up soon after taking up residence with the Vickers family. He grows fond of the brusque yet thoughtful trainer; of Vickers' motherless teen-age son; of pretty assistant-trainer Mackie, who's married to Vickers' older son (a furniture-maker). Also, Kendall finds that he enjoys riding—and is good at it. Then, however, local police fund the remains of Angela Brickell, a nymphomaniacal teenager who disappeared several months back after working as one of the "lads" at the Vickers stables. So tensions mount as everyone wonders whodunit. Was it genial upper-crust horse-owner Harry Goodhaven? Or randy jockey Sam Yaeger? Or amateur rider Nolan Everard, already found guilty in the manslaughter strangulation of a young woman? Or. . .? Things get slightly more complicated when someone tries to kill dear Harry—who's saved from a horrid drowning by John. And eventually, because John is proving a clever sleuth, the killer stalks him—in a grisly finale that has John, pierced through with an arrow, enduring a formidable survival-ordeal. Rather slow-moving (about 100 pp. too long) and predictable—but okay entertainment in the later, lesser Francis manner, without the foolish tedium of Hot Money or The Edge.
Pub Date: Oct. 17, 1990
ISBN: 0425234630
Page Count: 235
Publisher: Putnam
Review Posted Online: March 29, 2012
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 15, 1990
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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