Lepionka’s keen eye for integrating national news and technology into her developing characters’ plotlines produces a story...
Things get much too personal when a private eye’s brother is implicated in the disappearance of a local DJ.
Not a sound sleeper, especially when she’s over at her girlfriend Catherine’s place, Roxane Weary is roused in the middle of the night by a frantic call from her brother, Andrew. Andrew is panicked that he might be in trouble—real trouble, more than his home stash might otherwise get him into. He tells Roxane the story: Addison Stowe, a girl he once knew, came by his apartment in a state of terror, made a phone call, then disappeared into the night. Now Addison’s missing and Andrew’s the last person to have seen her. He knows he needs an ally like Roxane if the cops come knocking because he has a suspicious scratch on his face that suggests he might’ve been more than just a potential safe harbor to Addison. But Andrew claims he hadn’t seen or heard from Addison for ages before this last visit. Roxane wants to protect Andrew, whom she trusts in spite of his unconvincing story. She reaches out to Tom Heitker, a friend on the force who was her late father’s closest friend, to ask for his help and also because, well, she’s missed him. The two have put a brief romantic interlude aside to pursue a less fraught friendship, though Tom may be interested in revisiting their past. Roxane and Tom connect Addison’s presence at Andrew’s to the Nightshade Club across the street, where Addison was a sometime DJ, and to the BusPass dating app. Just as things start to go Roxane’s way in the investigation, Mickey Dillman, a former cop connected to the case, turns up dead, bringing Roxane back to square one and Andrew into police custody.
Lepionka’s keen eye for integrating national news and technology into her developing characters’ plotlines produces a story that’s timely in more ways than one.Pub Date: July 9, 2019
ISBN: 978-1-250-30935-8
Page Count: 352
Publisher: Minotaur
Review Posted Online: April 13, 2019
Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 1, 2019
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
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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