Parker continues his high rebound (begun with his Chandleresque Poodle Springs and last year's Spenser yarn, Stardust) with a sequel to Early Autumn (1980) that's even more vibrant than the original, which Spenser fans will remember as one of the Boston p.i.'s most personal, resonant cases. In Early Autumn, Spenser tutored lost-teen Paul Giacomin in the ways of manhood. Now 25, Paul's still not quite grown up and is again asking Spenser's help—to find Paul's weak-willed mom. Paul's need to confront his mom about why she left home without notice proves the crucible for his true coming of age—a transformation echoed in Spenser's revelations (unique to the series) about his own young adulthood, and mirrored in the parallel attempt by wild young hoodlum Gerry Broz to step into the shoes of his top-mobster dad, Joe Broz. After some low-key sleuthing (much in the company of a winsome dog), Spenser learns that Paul's man-crazy mom has run off with a lowlife who's stolen a million-plus from Gerry—and that Joe, determined that his son show himself man enough to one day take over the mob, is demanding that Gerry get it back. As usual, Spenser's girlfriend Susan hovers around the case, exchanging the usual pompous endearments with the p.i. ("there's a kind of purity about you," she says. "Everything is inner-directed"); and Spenser's shadow-side, Hawk, provides some minor support—but the emotionally tense focus here is on male passages, centering in a gripping test of Spenser's own manhood as he is shot and must escape through the woods with murderous Gerry and a pack of mobsters at his heels, and climaxing in a cathartic shootout as Gerry, backed by a distraught Joe, guns for Spenser-and for his own chance to be a man. Vintage hard-core Spenser—told in burnished prose, skimpy on the mystery-detection but rich in soul-satisfying macho action and in the mystique of the p.i.
Pub Date: July 17, 1991
ISBN: 0425132935
Page Count: 224
Publisher: Putnam
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 1, 1991
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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