A smart, scary, and satisfying novel.
In Rioux’s military thriller, a tightknit group of U.S. Army soldiers learn that one of their own has been shot dead—not on foreign soil, but in Kentucky—and they vow to retaliate.
As the story begins, a team of soldiers engage in fierce fighting with the Taliban in Afghanistan. Sgt. 1st Class Emmanuel “Manny” Muñoz’s composure, bravery, and quick decisions keep the mission alive, and also show he’s ”a badass and an outstanding combat leader.” A year later, back at Fort Campbell in Kentucky, Manny is promoted to first sergeant, thrilling the platoon. The day after the announcement, Manny and his young son Manuelito stop for cash at an ATM, and masked robbers from a nearby truck shoot and kill them both. Det. Jennifer Beck is put on the case. Because a child and a veteran were gunned down, the police are eager to catch those responsible—and so are members of Manny’s platoon. One of his men, Specialist DeMarcus Brown, locates the truck shown on the video feed from near the ATM. He and Staff Sgt. Thomas “Sully” Sullivan, along with four other men from the platoon, decide to avenge their friend’s death by whatever means necessary: “Considering the criminal acts that they were about to commit and the possible shitstorm that might explode…if they screwed things up, they felt surprisingly ready.” Adding to that storm is Sully and Beck’s mutual attraction for each other. Rioux packs the pages with action and myriad emotions—disbelief, sadness, fear, love, hatred, loyalty, and hope. As the narrative explores the many ways that actions have consequences, the writing is fluid, the conversations are believable, and the wartime imagery is frightening and powerful. The author served in the military, and his expertise regarding the armed forces is evident throughout the book in passages such as “This was not the 1950s; women now accounted for over 15 percent of US Army personnel and served in the combat arms.” The footnotes explaining various military terms can be distracting at times, however.
A smart, scary, and satisfying novel.Pub Date: Dec. 11, 2023
ISBN: 9781039192614
Page Count: 276
Publisher: FriesenPress
Review Posted Online: June 5, 2024
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 15, 2024
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
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