Thriller fans will find this adventure highly entertaining and addictive.
Zappa’s latest installment in his saga featuring Jo Crowder pits the New Orleans homicide detective against a ruthless Mexican drug lord.
After stealing a cache of drugs and money from a recent raid, a disillusioned Crowder is caught, convicted, and sentenced to 20 years in prison. “Here I am, putting my life on the line every fucking day doing my job, while others are getting away with shit—buying new cars, paying off their mortgages and credit card debt, and padding their bank accounts. And me, I can barely afford the mortgage payment on the dump I call a home.” Temporarily housed in a low-security detention facility, Crowder realizes she can’t spend the next two decades in prison—she needs to escape as soon as possible, flee the country, and try to begin a new life under a new identity. Then Elena Sanchez-Gomez—the wife of the head of an infamous Mexican drug-trafficking cartel—enters the facility as a prisoner; she’s recently been convicted of the attempted murder of a Louisiana state trooper during a traffic stop. The two women soon join forces in an attempt to not only survive the many dangers of the prison system but also to try to escape, cross the border into Mexico, and reunite with Sanchez-Gomez’s all-powerful husband, nicknamed El Leon (the Lion). Both women are cunning in their own ways: Crowder is a “dirty cop” with military and combat training, and Sanchez-Gomez is a survivor of Mexico’s mean streets, an orphan who’s had to kill multiple times to survive. Should the modern-day versions of Thelma and Louise eventually find a way to escape the detention faculty, their path to freedom—literally more than a thousand miles into southern Mexico—will be flooded with DEA agents, police officers, enemy cartel members, and innumerable people seeking the lucrative reward money for apprehending the two escaped convicts.
Complicating matters is El Leon’s newest drug on the market, which is laced with fentanyl, ecstasy, and LSD and is “a hundred times more potent than prescription oxycodone.” Described as “the most dangerous drug to have ever been trafficked in the United States,” the deadly new product leaves Crowder with a conflicted conscience. Her intense bond with Sanchez-Gomez is genuine, but will helping her ultimately end up killing thousands of addicts in the States? The action-packed story revolves around a cast of diverse and deeply developed characters, but the novel’s greatest strength comes from former trial lawyer Zappa’s ability to construct an impressively intricate storyline. The plot twists are worthy of applause, and readers will find themselves riveted throughout this highly palatable fusion of police procedural and mainstream thriller. The novel also differentiates itself from comparable titles through an examination (albeit subtle) of the opioid epidemic, which brings a timeliness and thematic weight to the story: “The body count from accidental overdoses continued to rise [in] the streets of more American cities. The only way to slow the emerging fentanyl epidemic was to stop the manufacture of [the] drug.”
Thriller fans will find this adventure highly entertaining and addictive.Pub Date: May 15, 2024
ISBN: 9781922329660
Page Count: 378
Publisher: Alkira
Review Posted Online: March 13, 2024
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
As usual, Evanovich handles the funny stuff better (much better) than the mystery stuff.
Stephanie Plum’s 31st adventure shows that Trenton’s preeminent fugitive-apprehension agent still has plenty of tricks up her sleeve, and needs every one of them.
The current caseload for Stephanie and Lula—the ex-prostitute file clerk at her cousin Vincent Plum’s bail bonds company, who serves as her unflappable sidekick—begins with two “failures to appear.” Eugene Fleck is suspected of being Robin Hoodie, who robs from the rich and, yes, distributes the proceeds to the poor. Racketeer Bruno Jug, who’s missed his court date on charges of tax evasion, is also suspected of drugging and raping a 14-year-old. But neither of these fugitives can hold a candle to Zoran Djordjevic, aka Fang, a self-proclaimed vampire wanted in connection with the gruesome fate of his late wife and three other missing women. As usual, Stephanie’s personal life is just as helter-skelter as her professional life as a bounty hunter. She’s managed to get herself engaged both to Det. Joe Morelli, of the Trenton PD, and Ranger, a former Special Forces agent who runs a private security firm; she thinks she may be pregnant; and she’s willing to marry the father, whichever of her fiances that turns out to be. On top of it all, her nothingburger schoolmate Herbert Slovinski suddenly pops up at one of the funerals she ferries her Grandma Mazur to, hitting on her relentlessly and gilding his importunities by cleaning and painting her shabby apartment and laying new carpet. Luckily, Lula’s on hand to offer cupcakes that stave off the worst disasters, and whenever this hodgepodge threatens to slow down, another FTA appears, or fails to appear.
As usual, Evanovich handles the funny stuff better (much better) than the mystery stuff.Pub Date: Nov. 5, 2024
ISBN: 9781668003138
Page Count: 320
Publisher: Atria
Review Posted Online: Oct. 26, 2024
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Dec. 1, 2024
Amateurish, with a twist savvy readers will see coming from a mile away.
A woman accused of shooting her husband six times in the face refuses to speak.
"Alicia Berenson was thirty-three years old when she killed her husband. They had been married for seven years. They were both artists—Alicia was a painter, and Gabriel was a well-known fashion photographer." Michaelides' debut is narrated in the voice of psychotherapist Theo Faber, who applies for a job at the institution where Alicia is incarcerated because he's fascinated with her case and believes he will be able to get her to talk. The narration of the increasingly unrealistic events that follow is interwoven with excerpts from Alicia's diary. Ah, yes, the old interwoven diary trick. When you read Alicia's diary you'll conclude the woman could well have been a novelist instead of a painter because it contains page after page of detailed dialogue, scenes, and conversations quite unlike those in any journal you've ever seen. " 'What's the matter?' 'I can't talk about it on the phone, I need to see you.' 'It's just—I'm not sure I can make it up to Cambridge at the minute.' 'I'll come to you. This afternoon. Okay?' Something in Paul's voice made me agree without thinking about it. He sounded desperate. 'Okay. Are you sure you can't tell me about it now?' 'I'll see you later.' Paul hung up." Wouldn't all this appear in a diary as "Paul wouldn't tell me what was wrong"? An even more improbable entry is the one that pins the tail on the killer. While much of the book is clumsy, contrived, and silly, it is while reading passages of the diary that one may actually find oneself laughing out loud.
Amateurish, with a twist savvy readers will see coming from a mile away.Pub Date: Feb. 5, 2019
ISBN: 978-1-250-30169-7
Page Count: 304
Publisher: Celadon Books
Review Posted Online: Nov. 3, 2018
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Nov. 15, 2018
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
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