A spare and disturbing meditation on familial obligations and affections, by the prolific and unjustly neglected Canadian writer Cohen (Emotional Arithmetic, 1995, etc.). Set, like many of Cohen's previous novels, in and around modern-day Toronto, this latest story traces the increasingly tense and confused relations between two grown brothers: Paul, studious, a detached observer of life, and Henry, the elder, a rowdy mechanic with a taste for the high life. The two share memories of having preserved each other through childhood disasters. Their parents marriage founders; as adolescents, they are involved in a fatal auto accident. As adults, their tastes would seem to drive them apart (Henry has his own garage; Paul works in the serene precincts of a used- and rare-book shop), yet a series of curious events thrust them together. Paul has fallen in love with Judith, whom he meets at the bookstore. Seductive and self-destructive in equal measure, she insists that only Paul can save her from the seedy allure of Toronto's underworld. (When they first meet, she is a heroin addict.) Attempting to protect her, he is drawn into the orbit of Nicko Ross, a perverse, lethal, zestfully crooked cop. Henry, Paul discovers, has a complex, baffling relationship with Ross: Are they partners in crime? Does Henry owe Ross a considerable amount of money? In attempting to find out, and to save Henry, Paul discovers that his brother is, in many ways, a stranger, willfully, dangerously misleading him, and that Judith, despite her denials, may be involved in a violent affair with Nicko. Paul flees the city for the simple comforts of the countryside. Inevitably, though, he's drawn back to Toronto, incapable of letting the mysteries alone. A violent confrontation leads to murder, and to Paul's grieving acceptance of the complexities of the human heart. Concise, chilly work, an unblinking examination of the manner in which love and hate intertwine. Grim, but deeply compelling.
Pub Date: Aug. 15, 1996
ISBN: 0-312-14288-9
Page Count: 256
Publisher: St. Martin's
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: June 15, 1996
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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