A superb procedural thriller with an always entertaining and appealing cast.
Tokyo police detectives investigate a case that’s either a suicide or a homicidal act of revenge in this fourth installment of a mystery series.
Detective Hiroshi Shimizu’s job as a forensic accountant in Tokyo’s homicide department keeps him busy. But despite his preference for working from his office, the chief sends Hiroshi to check out a mangled body on a sidewalk. The victim, Shigeru Onizuka, took a 20-story plummet off the Senden Infinity building where he worked. He may have cut through the fencing on the roof, but nothing at the scene points to a potential murder. It turns out Onizuka was a rather appalling boss; his harassment and overworking of a female employee three years ago drove her to a fatal jump off the same roof. Hiroshi and fellow detectives focus on the woman’s family, including her parents, her best friend, and her American boyfriend, a jazz musician in Japan. But there’s no shortage of suspects, as several employees brought complaints against Onizuka for his incessant bullying and mistreatment. He was also a man harboring countless dark secrets, such as the possibility that he was guilty of embezzlement, a crime right up Hiroshi’s alley. One thing the detectives definitely know is that Senden is a powerful company that nearly ruined a lawyer’s career for filing a suit against it. If Senden’s executives don’t want authorities nosing around, they may resort to sinister or even lethal deeds. And as the chief wants this case closed quickly, Hiroshi and the others are running out of time.
This latest volume continues Pronko’s consistently engrossing series. While this book isn’t quite as suspenseful as the preceding ones, it presents a remarkable mystery. For example, individuals with understandable motives crowd the suspect list, as the dead man was a ruthless villain, and the killer may actually be one of his victims. Hiroshi and other detectives make a welcome return, from chain-smoking Takamatsu to former sumo wrestler Sakaguchi, whose previous injury forces him to endure a knee brace that’s too small. With the murder mystery underway, the author effectively underscores women’s mistreatment in the workplace, not necessarily only in Japan. Male bosses criticize female employees for how they dress and pressure them to have drinks after work and to put in overtime. Hiroshi is even surprised that his live-in girlfriend, Ayana, suffered similar abuse at her bank job years ago. As the story progresses, the Senden roof becomes a recurring setting; detectives reexamine the scene or meet people there for questioning. It’s also an ideal spot for Pronko to display his crisp, noirish prose: “Takamatsu ground out his cigarette, ducked under the tape, poked his head out the V” in the fence, “and leaned forward to look at the black tar on the outer ledge, where it sloped down to a rain gutter, no fence or rail, and beyond only air and gravity.” The final act, which boasts a convincing and satisfying wrap-up, is sure to leave readers eagerly awaiting Hiroshi’s next case or seeking out previous series installments.
A superb procedural thriller with an always entertaining and appealing cast.Pub Date: July 30, 2021
ISBN: 978-1-942410-25-6
Page Count: 340
Publisher: Raked Gravel Press
Review Posted Online: Sept. 9, 2021
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Oct. 15, 2021
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
One of those rare triple-deckers that’s actually worth every page, every complication, every bead of sweat.
A routine break-in at the home of Sûreté homicide chief Armand Gamache leads slowly but surely to the revelation of a potentially calamitous threat to all Québec.
At first it seems as if nothing at all triggered the burglar alarm at Gamache’s home in Three Pines; it was literally a false alarm. It’s not till he receives a package containing his summer jacket that Gamache realizes someone really did get into his house, choosing to steal exactly this one item and return it with a cryptic note referring to “some malady…water” and “Angelica stems.” Having already refused to meet with Jeanne Caron, chief of staff to Marcus Lauzon, a powerful politician who’s already taken vengeance on Gamache and his family for not expunging his child’s criminal record, Gamache now agrees to meet with Charles Langlois, a marine biologist with ties to Caron who confesses to a leading role in stealing Gamache’s jacket. Their meeting ends inconclusively for Gamache, who’s convinced that Langlois is hiding something weighty, and all too conclusively for Langlois, who’s killed by a hit-and-run driver as he leaves. The news that Langlois had been investigating a water supply near the abbey of Saint-Gilbert-Entre-les-Loups sends Gamache scurrying off to the abbey, where the plot steadily thickens until he’s led to ask how “an old recipe for Chartreuse” can possibly be connected to “a terrorist plot to poison Québec’s drinking water.” That’s a great question, and answering it will take the second half of this story, which spins ever more intricate connections among leading players that become deeply unsettling.
One of those rare triple-deckers that’s actually worth every page, every complication, every bead of sweat.Pub Date: Oct. 29, 2024
ISBN: 9781250328137
Page Count: 432
Publisher: Minotaur
Review Posted Online: July 19, 2024
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 15, 2024
A dramatic, vividly detailed reconstruction of a little-known aspect of the Vietnam War.
A young woman’s experience as a nurse in Vietnam casts a deep shadow over her life.
When we learn that the farewell party in the opening scene is for Frances “Frankie” McGrath’s older brother—“a golden boy, a wild child who could make the hardest heart soften”—who is leaving to serve in Vietnam in 1966, we feel pretty certain that poor Finley McGrath is marked for death. Still, it’s a surprise when the fateful doorbell rings less than 20 pages later. His death inspires his sister to enlist as an Army nurse, and this turn of events is just the beginning of a roller coaster of a plot that’s impressive and engrossing if at times a bit formulaic. Hannah renders the experiences of the young women who served in Vietnam in all-encompassing detail. The first half of the book, set in gore-drenched hospital wards, mildewed dorm rooms, and boozy officers’ clubs, is an exciting read, tracking the transformation of virginal, uptight Frankie into a crack surgical nurse and woman of the world. Her tensely platonic romance with a married surgeon ends when his broken, unbreathing body is airlifted out by helicopter; she throws her pent-up passion into a wild affair with a soldier who happens to be her dead brother’s best friend. In the second part of the book, after the war, Frankie seems to experience every possible bad break. A drawback of the story is that none of the secondary characters in her life are fully three-dimensional: Her dismissive, chauvinistic father and tight-lipped, pill-popping mother, her fellow nurses, and her various love interests are more plot devices than people. You’ll wish you could have gone to Vegas and placed a bet on the ending—while it’s against all the odds, you’ll see it coming from a mile away.
A dramatic, vividly detailed reconstruction of a little-known aspect of the Vietnam War.Pub Date: Feb. 6, 2024
ISBN: 9781250178633
Page Count: 480
Publisher: St. Martin's
Review Posted Online: Nov. 4, 2023
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Dec. 1, 2023
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