For fans whose pulses quicken when they hear that “the very future of British racing was at risk.”
Life once more challenges Sid Halley, ex-jockey and ex-investigator, to turn lemons into lemonade.
You’d think that replacing his prosthetic left hand with a transplanted hand would be great for Sid, but its main consequence is the announcement by his wife, cancer researcher Marina, that she’s so freaked out by the new limb that she’s leaving him—or at least that she’s taking their 9-year-old daughter with her to Holland to care for her dying father and has no particular plans to return. In her absence, the always-moody Sid has nothing better to do than take up arms on behalf of Gary Bremner, a Yorkshire trainer and former jockey whose horse caused the damage to Sid’s hand during a race years ago. Gary is afraid that his stable will be targeted by a mysterious jockeys’ agent who’s not only found more and more creative ways to grab a piece of any transactions between trainers and the jockeys they hire, but who’s begun to dictate which favorites must lose which races. Gary’s absolutely right that defying the trainer, whom he eventually identifies as the sinister Anton Valance, is bad business. Though he miraculously escapes the barn fire that claims three of his horses, he doesn’t escape getting hanged from a tree, providing a news flash to DCI Williams, who’d assumed that Gary had died in that fire. The longer Sid spends poking into the jump-racing world of trainers and jockeys and horses he’s repeatedly tried to walk away from, the more convinced he becomes that Valance has a partner, and identifying that partner becomes his obsession. The inflated but routine mystery accordingly gets less and less mysterious as it goes along, but the horse-racing dope is as fascinating as ever.
For fans whose pulses quicken when they hear that “the very future of British racing was at risk.”Pub Date: Nov. 8, 2022
ISBN: 978-1-63910-294-5
Page Count: 340
Publisher: Crooked Lane
Review Posted Online: Aug. 16, 2022
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 1, 2022
Fast-moving excitement with a satisfying finish.
The feds must protect an accused criminal and an orphaned girl.
Maybe you’ve met him before as protagonist of The 6:20 Man (2022): Ex-Army Ranger Travis Devine, who’d had the dubious fortune to tangle with “the girl on the train,” is now assigned by his homeland security boss to protect Danny Glass, who's awaiting trial on multiple RICO charges in Washington state. Devine has what it takes: He “was a closer, snooper, fixer, investigator,” and, when necessary, a killer. These skills are on full display as the deaths of three key witnesses grind justice to a temporary halt. Glass has a 12-year-old niece, Betsy Odom, and each is the other’s only living relative—her parents recently died of an apparent drug overdose. The FBI has temporary guardianship of Betsy, who's a handful. She tells Travis that though she’s not yet 13, she's 28 in “life-shit years.” The financially well-heeled Glass wants to be her legal guardian with an eye to eventual adoption, but what are his real motives? And what happens to her if he's convicted? Meanwhile, Betsy insists that her parents never touched drugs, and she begs Travis to find out how they really died. This becomes part of a mission that oozes danger. The small town of Ricketts has a woman mayor who’s full of charm on the surface, but deeply corrupt and deadly when crossed. She may be linked to a subversive group called "12/24/65," as in 1865, when the Ku Klux Klan beast was born. Blood flows, bombs explode, and people perish, both good guys and not-so-good guys. Readers might ponder why in fiction as well as in life, it sometimes seems necessary for many to die so one may live. And what about the girl on the train? She's not necessary to the plot, but she's a fun addition as she pops in and out of the pages, occasionally leaving notes for Travis. Maybe she still wants him dead.
Fast-moving excitement with a satisfying finish.Pub Date: Nov. 12, 2024
ISBN: 9781538757901
Page Count: 432
Publisher: Grand Central Publishing
Review Posted Online: Sept. 14, 2024
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Oct. 15, 2024
One of those rare triple-deckers that’s actually worth every page, every complication, every bead of sweat.
A routine break-in at the home of Sûreté homicide chief Armand Gamache leads slowly but surely to the revelation of a potentially calamitous threat to all Québec.
At first it seems as if nothing at all triggered the burglar alarm at Gamache’s home in Three Pines; it was literally a false alarm. It’s not till he receives a package containing his summer jacket that Gamache realizes someone really did get into his house, choosing to steal exactly this one item and return it with a cryptic note referring to “some malady…water” and “Angelica stems.” Having already refused to meet with Jeanne Caron, chief of staff to Marcus Lauzon, a powerful politician who’s already taken vengeance on Gamache and his family for not expunging his child’s criminal record, Gamache now agrees to meet with Charles Langlois, a marine biologist with ties to Caron who confesses to a leading role in stealing Gamache’s jacket. Their meeting ends inconclusively for Gamache, who’s convinced that Langlois is hiding something weighty, and all too conclusively for Langlois, who’s killed by a hit-and-run driver as he leaves. The news that Langlois had been investigating a water supply near the abbey of Saint-Gilbert-Entre-les-Loups sends Gamache scurrying off to the abbey, where the plot steadily thickens until he’s led to ask how “an old recipe for Chartreuse” can possibly be connected to “a terrorist plot to poison Québec’s drinking water.” That’s a great question, and answering it will take the second half of this story, which spins ever more intricate connections among leading players that become deeply unsettling.
One of those rare triple-deckers that’s actually worth every page, every complication, every bead of sweat.Pub Date: Oct. 29, 2024
ISBN: 9781250328137
Page Count: 432
Publisher: Minotaur
Review Posted Online: July 19, 2024
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 15, 2024
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