Well-crafted suspense pushes along a perceptive meditation on the bonds of faith and family.
Not quite a thriller, but far too grisly for the run-of-the-mill family drama, Estill’s second novel (Evening Would Find Me, 2000) is a taut examination of familial loyalty.
Though the plot centers on a murder investigation, spun around it are the lives of three women, touched to various degrees by the violent death of young Dahlia. Sand Williams has spent much of her adult life in places no one wants to visit, war-torn countries and places of famine, first as a reporter and then as an aid worker. Now married to another aid worker, she and her husband decide on an indefinite respite at her father’s old Ozark cabin. When asked by neighbor Norah, a prim, disapproving fundamentalist, to look in on her two kids while she and her husband vacation, Sand (who loathes Norah) reluctantly agrees. After a violent storm, Sand drops by the house and finds 17-year-old, mildly-retarded Timothy napping on the couch while 18-year-old Dahlia lies murdered in her bed. Her body has been cleaned and drained, but underneath the fresh nightie are 20 stab wounds. The police suspect Timothy, but with no evidence, and, because of the tricky nature of interrogating him, they have to wait and see what turns up. In charge of the case is Patti Callahan, the only woman in the department and also the ex-lover of Sand’s dead father. Patti and Sand are haunted by Dahlia’s killing (made worse by Norah telling the town that Sand is a likely suspect), but it is Norah and her husband Lyman who have to confront the murder, and perhaps murderer, in their midst. Dahlia was Lyman’s daughter and Timothy belongs to Norah, the product of an abusive marriage. Now Lyman also suspects Timothy is the killer, while Norah and Timothy take refuge in their church. Estill plants a few convincing red herrings along the way, but this is less a murder mystery than a fast-paced character study, accomplished in its rendering of grief and anger and in its examination of how murder can destroy more than just the victim.
Well-crafted suspense pushes along a perceptive meditation on the bonds of faith and family.Pub Date: Jan. 11, 2007
ISBN: 0-312-35835-0
Page Count: 256
Publisher: St. Martin's
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Nov. 1, 2006
BOOK REVIEW
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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