Perfect fare for a standard dark and stormy night.
The ambience and paraphernalia of the Victorian ghostly tale are knowingly channeled in Australian author Harwood’s serpentine second novel (The Ghost Writer, 2004).
The book consists of five interconnected narratives, each of which glides assuredly between a mysterious past and a troubled present. Harwood begins with Bloomsbury maiden Constance Langton’s account of her misguided attempt to ease the sufferings of her mother (sunk in mourning over the early death of Constance’s younger sister Alma) by arranging a séance, which fails—spectacularly—to bring enlightenment or comfort. We will hear further, and much more, from Constance, but not until family lawyer John Montague has (at some length) confided the strange history of Wraxford Hall, the remote Suffolk mansion which Constance has inherited—in which, Montague strongly advises, she must never reside. All this extended exposition leads to the journal of Eleanor Unwin, who married into the star-crossed Wraxford family, reputedly killed her husband and either did away as well with their young daughter or absconded with the child, for neither was ever seen again. The many similarities between Constance’s and Eleanor’s circumstances excite the heiress’s overstimulated imagination, deepen her attorney’s fears and attract the attention of the (historical) Society for Psychical Research, whose (presumably fictional) agent Vernon Raphael sets out to solve these interlocking mysteries. Though Harwood has mastered all the particulars of this hardy genre, the decision to swaddle his story in multiple layers of narrative leaves the reader often struggling to remember who intermittently introduced characters are and how they’re related to one another. Nevertheless, the dependable tropes of recurring storms, long-held secrets, a villainous mesmerist who also dabbles in alchemy, even a menacing suit of armor, all work their traditional magic, and the reader remains hooked. Further treats lurk for those who spot clear allusions to genre authors Wilkie Collins and M.R. James—not to mention outright appropriation from Shirley Jackson’s 20th-century classic The Haunting of Hill House.
Perfect fare for a standard dark and stormy night.Pub Date: Feb. 3, 2009
ISBN: 978-0-15-101203-9
Page Count: 352
Publisher: Houghton Mifflin Harcourt
Review Posted Online: June 24, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Dec. 1, 2008
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
A suspenseful, professional-grade north country procedural whose heroine, a deft mix of compassion and attitude, would be...
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.Pub Date: July 28, 2015
ISBN: 978-0-312-58321-7
Page Count: 272
Publisher: Minotaur
Review Posted Online: April 21, 2015
Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 15, 2015
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