A dynamic cast drives this striking, historically rich crime thriller.
In Cobb’s mystery novel, a reporter aims to prove a wrongfully convicted man innocent by unmasking the actual killer.
People in 11-year-old Billy Tarwater’s Atlanta community are shocked when a young girl turns up missing. Before long, someone has abducted and assaulted three girls, leaving two dead and the other comatose. It’s 1963, the height of the Civil Rights Movement in the United States, and the police seemingly want to pin these crimes on Sam Jepperson, a local Black man. Despite a lack of evidence against him, he winds up behind bars. Years later, in 1980, Billy is a family man working at a newspaper as a reporter. He’s convinced that the wrong man sits in prison for the crimes against the girls, and he’s determined to track down the real culprit. He’s not after a story—he’s on a personal mission, as his wife has strong ties to the 17-year-old case. But there’s unmistakable potential for danger, especially if the murderer still walks free. Cobb’s mystery features compellingly drawn characters who draw the reader in. Much of the novel unfolds in 1963 and alternates narrative perspectives between copious people entangled in the crimes; Billy’s investigation dominates the latter half. A White man, he’s faced neither racial injustice nor a sexual assault, but the theme of the destructive effects of discrimination remains strong throughout. Punchy dialogue propels a series of interrogation and interview scenes from the police’s investigation in 1963 (“They put him through the mill. Ground him down like a sorghum kernel”) and Billy’s rounds of questions in 1980. These sequences highlight the alarming differences between the two paths of inquiry, as it’s disturbingly clear that the cops have a preconceived idea as to who’ll be serving time. Although most readers will unravel the mystery well before the end, the chilling denouement packs a punch.
A dynamic cast drives this striking, historically rich crime thriller.Pub Date: Sept. 1, 2022
ISBN: 9780578371436
Page Count: 480
Publisher: M G Cobb Books
Review Posted Online: April 7, 2023
Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 15, 2023
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
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
Middling for this stellar series, which makes it another must-read, preferably in one sitting.
Unbeknownst to each other, Wyoming Fish and Game Warden Joe Pickett and outlaw falconer Nate Romanowski embark on equally urgent pursuits that converge in a way neither of them suspects.
Nate, who’s been off the grid ever since his wife, Liv, was killed in a fire intended to kill him too in Three-Inch Teeth (2024), has sworn vengeance on murderous conspirator Axel Soledad. After shooting several of Soledad’s hirelings, he joins forces with his friend and fellow Special Forces vet Geronimo Jones, who’s tracked him down, to chase his quarry deep into the woods. Governor Spencer Rulon, meanwhile, has pressed Joe into service once again to find veteran hunting guide Spike Rankin and his new assistant, Mark Eisele, who just happens to be Rulon’s son-in-law. Although nobody’s heard from the men for two days, the governor doesn’t want his wife and daughter to know they’re missing, and that means not alerting the media or the local sheriff, who’s no fan of Rulon’s anyway. Readers who’ve already seen Rankin and Eisele overpowered and imprisoned by a mysterious crew they ran into while they were setting up for the elk hunting season will assume that Soledad is behind their kidnapping as well. But Box will keep everyone guessing about exactly how Soledad and the ragtag military cult he’s gathered around him plan to confront the military-industrial complex he’s persuaded them is a clear and present danger. You know you’re in for a wild ride when Joe, saying goodbye to Marybeth, his long-suffering wife, promises her, “I’ll do my job and not cross the line.”
Middling for this stellar series, which makes it another must-read, preferably in one sitting.Pub Date: Feb. 25, 2025
ISBN: 9780593851050
Page Count: 384
Publisher: Putnam
Review Posted Online: Jan. 18, 2025
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 15, 2025
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