An academic whose bestselling, man-hating self-helper made her popular enough for somebody to murder provides another overwrought but gripping case for Dr. Alex Delaware (Over the Edge, 1987; The Web, 1996, not reviewed, etc.). Three months after most of the NYPD has given up on nailing Prof. Hope Devane's killer, Lt. Milo Sturgis wants his longtime friend and consultant Delaware to explain why the author of Wolves and Sheep was brutally stabbed to death. The problem, as Delaware soon finds, is that so many people hated Devane, "the ultimate scholar-slash-good-mother," that they might as well have given out numbers at the murder scene. Her withdrawn, older husband was afraid of losing her; her fellow-guests on the talk-show circuit made good livings (surprisingly good) from sharpening their claws on her; the students her freelance university tribunal put on trial for sexual harassment (ranging from persistent requests for dates on up to date rape) would've loved to see her permanently assigned to a higher jurisdiction. And, as usual, when Delaware digs deeper, he finds much, much more, none of it very nice. Why was Devane earning fat consulting fees from big-shot lawyer Robert Barone and fertility specialist Dr. Milan Cruvic (whose own resume shows some suspicious gaps)? And how did her childhood (which old fans of Delaware will have seen looming as the touchstone long before Delaware gets around to rooting it up) steer her toward misanthropy, kinky sex, and even darker secrets? At the heart of it all are a conspiracy that'll confirm your worst urban-legend fears and a killer so clever that the deductions and the arrest only open a new chapter in Delaware's job. The red-herring neuroses Delaware keeps digging out of Hope Devane's past make this as pulpish as you'd expect from Kellerman. But his success in pulling everything together in the end makes the entry a standout in Delaware's bumpy series.
Pub Date: Jan. 13, 1997
ISBN: 0-553-08922-6
Page Count: 384
Publisher: Bantam
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Oct. 15, 1996
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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