In her powerfully written third appearance, Bell (Bitter River, 2013, etc.) emerges as a compelling heroine with an...
Even though her life seems to be spiraling out of control, Bell Elkins still has to care for her family members and do her job as a West Virginia county prosecutor.
Bell’s sister, Shirley, has finally been released from prison after serving a long sentence for killing their father before he got around to molesting Bell. Unfortunately, Shirley, who’s living with Bell, has been overwhelmed by alcohol-fueled attacks of rage against Bell, who’s eagerly awaiting the arrival of her daughter, Carla, for the summer. Bell is furious when her ex-husband arranges for Carla to spend the summer as an intern in London and has trouble controlling her rage when a man who’s molesting his stepchildren is freed because none of them will testify. Bell’s hometown of Acker’s Gap is dirt-poor and beset by drug and alcohol use and high unemployment. When two people are brutally murdered, Bell and Sheriff Nick Fogelsong have little to go on. The big draw for the summer is the arrival of former governor Riley Jessup, a native son who’s donating an MRI machine to the new hospital. After growing up poor, he went into politics and made a fortune, but all his money can't save his beloved, sickly grandson. In the meantime, Lindy Crabtree can barely cope with the deterioration of her father, a former coal miner who’s slowly losing his mind. Lindy, who loves to read, works nights at a gas station. To soothe her unstable father, she’s fixed the cellar of their decrepit house to resemble a coal mine. While Lindy worries that her father may be the killer, Bell traces a telltale business card to a company owned by Jessup but is stonewalled by the politician.
In her powerfully written third appearance, Bell (Bitter River, 2013, etc.) emerges as a compelling heroine with an especially vexing mystery to solve.Pub Date: Aug. 26, 2014
ISBN: 978-1-250-04473-0
Page Count: 400
Publisher: Minotaur
Review Posted Online: July 12, 2014
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 1, 2014
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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