TWO PARTS BLOODY MURDER

Name: TWO PARTS BLOODY MURDER
Author: Jen. J. Danna
ISBN: 978-1-4328-3027-4

by Jen. J. Danna with Ann Vanderlaan ‧ RELEASE DATE: Feb. 18, 2015

Leigh’s fourth (A Flame in the Wind of Death, 2014, etc.) is a complex case loaded with forensic and historical detail, the...

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An ice-cold case heats up when a new murder discloses an old one.

Checking out a story about a body hidden in an old building, Massachusetts State Police Trooper Leigh Abbott finds a recently dead man. Then, while waiting for the crime scene team, she and the medical examiner find a hidden door. At the bottom of the stairs is the Blue Ruin speak-easy, and behind a brick wall are the remains of a corpse. It’s a perfect case for Leigh to work with her lover, forensic anthropologist Dr. Matt Lowell, and his team. Someone has been sending Leigh packages of material suggesting that her father, a respected state trooper killed in the line of duty, was a dirty cop. She takes a chance on asking a computer expert to go over the material while she works the two murders. The more recent corpse is that of Peter Holt, the only son of wealthy widow Evelyn Holt. And the skeletal remains prove to be those of Charles Ward, Mrs. Holt’s father, who’s been missing ever since Prohibition. Since Ward was the owner of the speak-easy, Leigh looks for a connection between the Holt family and the Kain family, who first reported the possibility of the hidden body. The elder Kain, now in a nursing home with Alzheimer’s, was once a bricklayer, and evidence suggests that Ward was killed with a bricklayer’s tool. Although Leigh is certain that Kain is Charles Ward's killer, she can’t prove it, and the long-ago unsolved murder of Kain’s wife only complicates the case. As they dig for clues, Leigh and Matt find feuding families, an innocent man in prison and new information about Leigh’s father.

Leigh’s fourth (A Flame in the Wind of Death, 2014, etc.) is a complex case loaded with forensic and historical detail, the authors’ best so far.

Pub Date: Feb. 18, 2015

ISBN: 978-1-4328-3027-4

Page Count: 282

Publisher: Five Star/Gale Cengage

Review Posted Online: Nov. 17, 2014

Kirkus Reviews Issue: Dec. 1, 2014

Categories:

MYSTERY & DETECTIVE | POLICE PROCEDURALS | DETECTIVES & PRIVATE INVESTIGATORS

- BOOK REVIEW
A FLAME IN THE WIND OF DEATH
by Jen. J. Danna with Ann Vanderlaan

- BOOK REVIEW
DEAD, WITHOUT A STONE TO TELL IT
by Jen. J. Danna with Ann Vanderlaan

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A CONSPIRACY OF BONES

by Kathy Reichs ‧ RELEASE DATE: March 17, 2020

Forget about solving all these crimes; the signal triumph here is (spoiler) the heroine’s survival.

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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

Categories:

- BOOK REVIEW
FIRE AND BONES
by Kathy Reichs

- BOOK REVIEW
COLD, COLD BONES
by Kathy Reichs

- BOOK REVIEW
THE BONE CODE
by Kathy Reichs

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BADLANDS

by C.J. Box ‧ RELEASE DATE: July 28, 2015

A suspenseful, professional-grade north country procedural whose heroine, a deft mix of compassion and attitude, would be...

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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.