Vividly atmospheric; the thieves’ slang all by itself evokes 19th-century New York with wonderful specificity. Let’s hope...
Bartender-turned–“copper star” Timothy Wilde returns in a second mordant historical mystery (The Gods of Gotham, 2012).
It’s been less than a year since the fire that consumed his savings and scarred his face led Timothy reluctantly to join the brand new New York City Police Force that gets its nickname from its star-shaped copper badges. Now, on February 14, 1846, he’s congratulating himself for solving the theft of a painting when Lucy Adams bursts into police headquarters at the Tombs with the news that her sister, Delia, and son, Jonas, have been kidnapped. Lucy and her kin are free blacks from Albany, she tells Timothy, but “[s]lave agents care nothing for that, when the chance for profit is high enough.” When Timothy manages to rescue Delia and Jonas with the help of his brother Valentine, he learns that their abductors have powerful political protectors in the Democratic Party machine, of which Valentine is a loyal member. Furthermore, Lucy is secretly married to a white state senator whose associates in Tammany Hall have every reason for wanting to get her quietly out of town. Silkie Marsh, the evil brothel madam Timothy foiled previously, turns out to be centrally involved in both the abductions and the plan to eliminate Lucy—and Madam Marsh hates Timothy just as much as ever, while still pining for drug-addicted Valentine. The brothers’ relationship remains fraught but enduring as multiple plot complications ensue; Timothy’s loathing of slavery and friendships with several African-American activists give the novel its moral fire. As was the case in The Gods of Gotham, Faye folds a blistering indictment of prejudice and persecution of the defenseless within a satisfyingly complex mystery. Its resolution saves some of the innocent and punishes a few of the guilty without pretending that society’s basic injustices have been ameliorated.
Vividly atmospheric; the thieves’ slang all by itself evokes 19th-century New York with wonderful specificity. Let’s hope Faye finds more dirty work for her intriguingly conflicted hero.Pub Date: Sept. 17, 2013
ISBN: 978-0-399-15838-4
Page Count: 464
Publisher: Amy Einhorn/Putnam
Review Posted Online: Aug. 3, 2013
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 15, 2013
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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