The second in DePoy’s new series (Cold Florida, 2016, etc.) is packed with humor, philosophical musings, fascinating...
An unlikely sleuth battles drug lords to rescue two sisters in big trouble.
The first time Foggy Moscowitz lays eyes on Lena, she’s just shot David Waters to death. Foggy, who fled Brooklyn when his legendary habit of boosting cars caught up with him, has made a new life for himself as the leader and only member of Child Protective Services in Fry’s Bay, Florida. David’s father, wealthy Seminole Ironstone Waters, is well-aware of his son’s unnatural interest in children but still wants Lena dead. Lena claims to be 14, though her wisecracking and expertise with guns make her seem much older; she also claims she's a hit man whom David hired to kill him so her older sister, Ellen Greenberg, whom he impregnated, and her baby would inherit a $1 million insurance policy. When Lena requests a meeting with Ironstone, who lives in a mansion surrounded by heavily armed guards, Seminole bigshot Mister Redhawk arranges it. Foggy gets shot and almost dies shielding Lena in a gun battle with Ironstone, but ever intrepid, he continues his protection of Lena and his search for Ellen and the baby, who’ve vanished. Foggy gets some unexpected help from Seminole shaman John Horse, whose potions pack a powerful kick and whose knowledge of everything happening in the area opens up new areas of investigation. Following Ellen’s trail leads Foggy and Lena to a fishing camp and restaurant owned by a bitter and dangerous Cuban drug lord whose business is being taken over by the Colombians. It will take every bit of Foggy’s expertise plus help from John Horse to extricate the sisters from this mess before they’re all killed.
The second in DePoy’s new series (Cold Florida, 2016, etc.) is packed with humor, philosophical musings, fascinating characters, and his hero’s palpable passion for his job.Pub Date: March 1, 2017
ISBN: 978-0-7278-8663-7
Page Count: 224
Publisher: Severn House
Review Posted Online: Dec. 18, 2016
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 1, 2017
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
Eskens’ debut is a solid and thoughtful tale of a young man used to taking on burdens beyond his years—none more dangerous...
A struggling student’s English assignment turns into a mission to solve a 30-year-old murder.
Joe Talbert has had very few breaks in his 21 years. The son of a single and very alcoholic mother, he’s worked hard to save enough money to leave his home in Austin, Minnesota, for the University of Minnesota. Although he has to leave his autistic younger brother, Jeremy Naylor, to the dubious care of their mother, Joe is determined to beat the odds and get his degree. For an assignment in his English class, he decides to interview Carl Iverson, a man convicted of raping and killing a 14-year-old girl. Carl, who maintains his innocence, is dying of cancer and has been released to a nursing home to end his life in lonely but unrepentant pain. The more Joe learns about Carl—a Vietnam vet with two Purple Hearts and a Silver Cross—the more the young man questions the conviction. Joe’s plan to write a short biography and earn an easy A turns into something more. Even after his mother is arrested for drunk driving and guilt-trips Joe into ransacking his college fund to bail her out, he soldiers on with the project, though her irresponsibility forces him to take Jeremy into his care. But it’s his younger brother who cracks the code of the long-dead murder victim’s secret diary and an attractive neighbor, Lila Nash, who has her own agenda for helping Joe solve the mystery, whatever the risk.
Eskens’ debut is a solid and thoughtful tale of a young man used to taking on burdens beyond his years—none more dangerous than championing a bitter old man convicted of a horrific crime.Pub Date: Oct. 14, 2014
ISBN: 978-1-61614-998-7
Page Count: 300
Publisher: Seventh Street Books
Review Posted Online: Oct. 8, 2014
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Oct. 15, 2014
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