Amiable international intrigue that’s less James Bond than Matt Helm.
The chronicler of Stephanie Plum (Notorious Nineteen, 2012, etc.) teams up with screenwriter Goldberg (Mr. Monk Goes to Germany, 2008, etc.) to kick off a lighthearted new series pairing an FBI agent with the con artist who’s been her chronic prey.
When nonpareil scam-meister Nicolas Fox escapes from custody shortly after Special Agent Kate O’Hare finally hauls him off to jail, she begs to be put back on his case. But there’s a great reason she isn’t: The Feds want her to partner with Nick in tracking down playboy investment banker Derek Griffin and retrieving the $500 million of his company’s money he took with him. Kate and Nick assemble a crew as dutifully as the cast of Mission: Impossible for the caper, and soon, rock-bottom thespian Boyd Capwell, Texas trucker Wilma Owens and special-effects tech Chet Kershaw are setting up a sting to trick Neal Burnside, Griffin’s scalawag attorney, into revealing his boss’ whereabouts. Since every other FBI agent in America is hunting for Nick, Kate’s career, maybe even her freedom, depends on shielding him from all her colleagues. So it’s nice for them both when Griffin turns out to be lying low in Indonesia, where pirates roam the seas unchecked and extradition treaties are no more than a pipe dream but at least the landscape is clear of other FBI types. Kate plots to bag Griffin and the loot; Nick dreams of getting into Kate’s pants and taking off with the money himself. The duo is meant to be as adorably romantic as Nick and Nora, but the only elements missing to make their adventure a sitcom are a laugh track and some laughs.
Amiable international intrigue that’s less James Bond than Matt Helm.Pub Date: June 18, 2013
ISBN: 978-0-345-54304-2
Page Count: 320
Publisher: Bantam
Review Posted Online: June 8, 2013
Kirkus Reviews Issue: June 15, 2013
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
Eskens’ debut is a solid and thoughtful tale of a young man used to taking on burdens beyond his years—none more dangerous...
A struggling student’s English assignment turns into a mission to solve a 30-year-old murder.
Joe Talbert has had very few breaks in his 21 years. The son of a single and very alcoholic mother, he’s worked hard to save enough money to leave his home in Austin, Minnesota, for the University of Minnesota. Although he has to leave his autistic younger brother, Jeremy Naylor, to the dubious care of their mother, Joe is determined to beat the odds and get his degree. For an assignment in his English class, he decides to interview Carl Iverson, a man convicted of raping and killing a 14-year-old girl. Carl, who maintains his innocence, is dying of cancer and has been released to a nursing home to end his life in lonely but unrepentant pain. The more Joe learns about Carl—a Vietnam vet with two Purple Hearts and a Silver Cross—the more the young man questions the conviction. Joe’s plan to write a short biography and earn an easy A turns into something more. Even after his mother is arrested for drunk driving and guilt-trips Joe into ransacking his college fund to bail her out, he soldiers on with the project, though her irresponsibility forces him to take Jeremy into his care. But it’s his younger brother who cracks the code of the long-dead murder victim’s secret diary and an attractive neighbor, Lila Nash, who has her own agenda for helping Joe solve the mystery, whatever the risk.
Eskens’ debut is a solid and thoughtful tale of a young man used to taking on burdens beyond his years—none more dangerous than championing a bitter old man convicted of a horrific crime.Pub Date: Oct. 14, 2014
ISBN: 978-1-61614-998-7
Page Count: 300
Publisher: Seventh Street Books
Review Posted Online: Oct. 8, 2014
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Oct. 15, 2014
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