A surprisingly humane assemblage of unforgettable characters, a fun house plot, and sharply observed societal shortcomings.
Two detectives take on a bizarre case with suspicious origins and increasingly personal ramifications in Canning’s mystery novel.
This satiric, at times surreal mystery plunges two detectives into a case involving (but not limited to) experts in public manipulation, corrupt corporate moguls, anarchic artist and feminist groups, assorted crooks, a movie star with alleged cannibalistic tendencies, a search for a rumored-to-be-lethal stockpile of Vietnam War–era Agent Orange somewhere in Southern California, a secret organization with global reach…and a fictional cameo appearance by Tom Hanks. That this wild ride doesn’t spin out of control is down to the sure hand of the author, who balances the antic plot with unexpected heart. This element is personified by Teddy, one of the owners of the Lint Detective Agency, located in a Los Angeles strip mall. Teddy, a “Black Mr. Rogers in an eyepatch,” is a one-eyed, cardigan-wearing “believer in the direct application of compassion.” His protective brother, Ralph, of seeming Mediterranean heritage, is athletic and tough. They bonded as young children after being kidnapped by a twisted cult leader to whom Teddy lost his eye. (Ralph lost a less visible part of his anatomy.) Their reputation for investigative alacrity brings them a client who attempts to bolster his dubious claim of being a CIA agent by bringing actor Tom Hanks with him for a brief, paid appearance as his “legitimacy catalyst.” Canning weaves dark humor, occasional gritty violence, and barbed observations of societal ills into an odyssey of discovery that culminates in a riotous clash of gun-toting feminist “gynarchists”—artists who create public disruptions (“sonic incontinence,” anyone?)—and an “invisible government” of elite corporate manipulators whose mantra is to appeal “to emotion over intellect, bias over information.” A reunion with a sister cult survivor—a secret held by the East LA grocer who rescued and adopted the brothers—and a bittersweet choice facing Teddy provide additional enjoyable texture to the mix.
A surprisingly humane assemblage of unforgettable characters, a fun house plot, and sharply observed societal shortcomings.Pub Date: Aug. 29, 2024
ISBN: 9798323893928
Page Count: 261
Publisher: Self
Review Posted Online: Aug. 25, 2024
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Oct. 15, 2024
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
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
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
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