A sympathetic and clever protagonist is the point of interest in this subtle, subdued family mystery.
In Costanzo’s novel, a directionless middle-aged man uncovers his late father’s secrets.
Dexter Renshaw is a 48-year-old former copy editor who has been placidly watching his life pass him by since the local newspaper went digital. After the death of his father, who was a police detective, Dex tries to tend to his stressed mother, his distant son, and his dismissive ex-wife—none of whom really seem to need him—when a stranger named Novack approaches him with a strange story. Novack claims that Dex’s father had put him away for a carjacking yearsearlier but took pity on him and stored Novack’s most important belongings in a secret safe deposit box, to which he now hopes Dex can produce the key. Passive to a fault, Dex brushes away his initial suspicions about Novack’s story and hands over the key—unwittingly setting himself up for a brutal attack that leaves him limping, living with his mother, and filled with nagging doubt about his father. In the months that follow, Dex slowly digs through the facts of the carjacking, interviews several people involved, and even pokes around a local encampment of unhoused people where Novack was said to have been seen. He soon discovers that his father had indeed been keeping some big secrets. Costanzo’s premise is immediately intriguing and Dex’s violent attack gives the story a jolt of excitement, but what follows is a much slower, more subtle style of mystery. There are few thrills and very little suspense in Dex’s investigation, which may disappoint readers eager for more lively revelations. Instead, the author digs into the thoughts of his amiable main character; Dex’s dry wit keeps him endearing. (Recovering from his injuries, Dex reflects on “the old dancing dog theory. People will be so amazed just to see me dancing that they won’t even notice whether I’m doing it well or not.”) The eventual revelations are disappointingly mundane, but Dex’s reflections along the way about fathers and sons, family expectations, and the way the world shifts around those just trying to get by provide plenty of drama.
A sympathetic and clever protagonist is the point of interest in this subtle, subdued family mystery.Pub Date: Jan. 6, 2025
ISBN: 9798218559212
Page Count: 246
Publisher: N/A
Review Posted Online: April 4, 2025
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
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
Middling for this stellar series, which makes it another must-read, preferably in one sitting.
Unbeknownst to each other, Wyoming Fish and Game Warden Joe Pickett and outlaw falconer Nate Romanowski embark on equally urgent pursuits that converge in a way neither of them suspects.
Nate, who’s been off the grid ever since his wife, Liv, was killed in a fire intended to kill him too in Three-Inch Teeth (2024), has sworn vengeance on murderous conspirator Axel Soledad. After shooting several of Soledad’s hirelings, he joins forces with his friend and fellow Special Forces vet Geronimo Jones, who’s tracked him down, to chase his quarry deep into the woods. Governor Spencer Rulon, meanwhile, has pressed Joe into service once again to find veteran hunting guide Spike Rankin and his new assistant, Mark Eisele, who just happens to be Rulon’s son-in-law. Although nobody’s heard from the men for two days, the governor doesn’t want his wife and daughter to know they’re missing, and that means not alerting the media or the local sheriff, who’s no fan of Rulon’s anyway. Readers who’ve already seen Rankin and Eisele overpowered and imprisoned by a mysterious crew they ran into while they were setting up for the elk hunting season will assume that Soledad is behind their kidnapping as well. But Box will keep everyone guessing about exactly how Soledad and the ragtag military cult he’s gathered around him plan to confront the military-industrial complex he’s persuaded them is a clear and present danger. You know you’re in for a wild ride when Joe, saying goodbye to Marybeth, his long-suffering wife, promises her, “I’ll do my job and not cross the line.”
Middling for this stellar series, which makes it another must-read, preferably in one sitting.Pub Date: Feb. 25, 2025
ISBN: 9780593851050
Page Count: 384
Publisher: Putnam
Review Posted Online: Jan. 18, 2025
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 15, 2025
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