A sensational gumshoe and engaging subplots turn a standard detective tale into something exceptional.
A Cincinnati video store owner finds herself embroiled in a real-life whodunit in this murder mystery set in 1990.
An irate customer of Annie’s Video and Music Hall claims the VHS copy of Cinderella she rented has a surprise porno scene. But owner Annie Fillmore watches it and realizes it’s much worse: What begins as sex between a man and a woman ends in the latter’s apparent death. Annie dubs a copy before turning over the original to the police, who clearly don’t take the matter seriously. She, on the other hand, watches the scene repeatedly, trying to identify the couple or location, and looks into the last few customers who rented Cinderella. But further troubles are brewing. A couple whose young daughter watched the tainted VHS copy threatens Annie with a lawsuit while a churchgoer accuses her of peddling “smut” in her store. Meanwhile, someone firebombs another video store that specializes in XXX-rated movies. Annie can’t help but see a connection between the firebombing and Cinderella, and when a body later turns up, she suspects the victim is the woman from the video. Her sleuthing continues and soon becomes dangerous, especially after someone fires a shot at her. Reed’s (Banking on Trouble, 2015) novel, a prequel to her debut, features an indelible protagonist. Annie is whip-smart, coolly handles insolent customers, and narrates with wit, such as thinking a $65,000 car should have “a butler in the glove compartment.” She’s moreover supported by intriguing characters, from romantic interest Neil Jakhar—who may be “too young,” at age 28, for her—to Annie’s two moms (maternal and paternal aunts, who both raised her after her parents’ deaths). The setting is likewise distinctive as well as nostalgic, with the tale including numerous movie titles and references via names (for example, Annie’s friend Marilyn Monroe, “née Klotzman”). Unfortunately, the mystery itself can’t quite match the first-rate subplots and characters. Though Annie’s amateur investigative technique is believable, a lack of suspects and clues results in an anticlimactic reveal—though the heroine in peril makes for an exciting conclusion.
A sensational gumshoe and engaging subplots turn a standard detective tale into something exceptional.Pub Date: July 21, 2017
ISBN: 978-1-5489-2175-0
Page Count: 380
Publisher: CreateSpace
Review Posted Online: June 25, 2019
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 15, 2019
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
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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