A weird whiff of the ’60s and scarcely a trace of irony or wit. Cross Austin Powers with Shaft and you've got this...
Ultra-cool black urban professional discovers that sex isn't everything, in a fourth novel by George, better known as a music journalist (Hip Hop America, 1998, etc.).
Other epiphanies follow, but first Dean Chance has lots and lots of sex with girlfriend Millie James, a “fine brown lady” who's more than willing to be smeared head-to-toe with melted Godiva chocolate and lovingly licked off. Then, after a post-sex stroll in Central Park, Millie suddenly bursts into tears because she was expecting him to propose. Suave to a fault, Dean makes her wait just a little bit longer before he pops the question. Millie is mollified. Dean is 99 percent sure that she's his one and only, but since he's a TV talk-show producer looking to boost ratings with some surefire sleaze, it's not long before he's tempted to stray. A heavy-breathing interview with a black dominatrix offers a tantalizing glimpse into New York's sexual underworld. A man-of-the-world chat with a swinging black NYU professor who also writes sex books gives him a few more leads, but Dean is distracted by a tawny temptress while buying designer ties at Barneys. Bee Cole invites him into her limo, her apartment, and her bed, where she demonstrates some interesting new ways to knot all that expensive silk. Dean loves the sex but hates himself (sort of) for cheating on Millie and talks it over at the next Knicks game with his buddies. The story gets a little more complicated: Is Millie as faithful as he thinks? Who is the mysterious male stranger in the Internet chat room with that sexy lady? Who made the secret videotapes of Dean and Bee doing the nasty? All is revealed in a who-cares denouement that will surprise no one.
A weird whiff of the ’60s and scarcely a trace of irony or wit. Cross Austin Powers with Shaft and you've got this unappealing heroPub Date: May 1, 2001
ISBN: 0-7432-0443-3
Page Count: 224
Publisher: Scribner
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 1, 2001
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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