This well-executed sequel with a striking detective demands a third installment.
In this novel, a “mundane” hit-and-run case has mess written all over it for a down-but-not-out private investigator.
Sidney Reed was once considered Alaska’s best private detective. But after life dealt him “a shitty hand,” he finds himself living in a dingy apartment above a downtown Anchorage coffee shop and is no longer on noted criminal defense attorney Eddie Baker’s “A” list of investigators. But Eddie’s in a bind and needs Sidney to help him with the politically sensitive hit-and-run that claimed the life of the son of a prominent Native leader. Eddie’s client, Rudy Skinner, was in prison for another offense and was ratted out by his cellmate, who claimed Rudy confessed the crime to him. But Eddie promises the case will be “nothing too intense.” Sidney is reluctant to take the assignment: He is still haunted by the death of his beloved wife, Molly, who by all official accounts chose suicide. Sidney needs answers. “She’s not coming back,” says his psychiatrist. “The sooner you come to grips with that, the sooner you can get on with your life.” His life could end sooner than expected, as his investigation leads him to the Cooley family, which is well known to anyone who works in the Alaska legal system. Let’s just say that things start breaking bad for Sidney. Norgard’s second Sidney Read novel achieves what a good sequel should. It gives the protagonist a case that will further test his acumen while moving his personal story forward—with a budding relationship with reporter Maria Maldonado—and setting up a possible full reckoning with Molly’s death. The author makes effective use of the Anchorage setting; suffice to say, Sam Spade never had his car totaled by an errant moose. Norgard avoids some clichés of PI fiction, such as the obligatory hostility from the local police, but indulges in others, like the overly talkative (albeit, surprisingly soulful) villain in the otherwise tautly wrought climax.
This well-executed sequel with a striking detective demands a third installment.Pub Date: Jan. 10, 2022
ISBN: 978-1-947504-30-1
Page Count: 346
Publisher: Bird Dog Publishing
Review Posted Online: Jan. 4, 2022
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 1, 2022
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
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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