by Robert Ellis ‧ RELEASE DATE: Dec. 6, 2011
Murder and cover-ups in the city of the angels.
Once again the paparazzi are surrounding celebrity hangout Club 3 A.M. But this time the LAPD Deputy Chief is circling the wagons to keep them away and putting admired homicide detective Lena Gamble in charge while D.A. Higgins and his assistants Debi Watson and Steven Bennett are shunting legal maneuvers off to Greg Vaughan. What makes this case such a hot potato is that inside, dead, is friend to the glitterati, club owner Johnny Bosco, and Jacob Gant, much loathed by the public for his acquittal in the brutal rape/slaying of his teenage neighbor Lily Hight. Security tapes show Lily’s father driving away from the 3 A.M. scene with something that looks like a gun on the seat beside him. But Higgins, Watson and Bennett, still criticized for botching the Gant trial, realize that they’ll be in for more condemnation if Hight is charged for what the public deems justifiable homicide. When Lena contacts investigator Dan Cobb for background on Lily’s murder, the bodies start falling, the lies keep coming and it becomes clear that the D.A.’s office, knowing full well that Gant was innocent, prosecuted him anyway, paving the way for the Bosco and Gant murders. One final twist will nudge the death total past nine, leaving Lena the last one standing. Solid police work from Lena (The Lost Witness, 2009, etc.). If, like Shakespeare, you want to kill all the lawyers, this is your must-read.
Pub Date: Dec. 6, 2011
ISBN: 978-0-312-36617-9
Page Count: 352
Publisher: Minotaur
Review Posted Online: Nov. 2, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Nov. 15, 2011
Share your opinion of this book
More by Robert Ellis
BOOK REVIEW
by Robert Ellis
BOOK REVIEW
by Robert Ellis
BOOK REVIEW
by Robert Ellis
by Kathy Reichs ‧ RELEASE DATE: March 17, 2020
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
Share your opinion of this book
More by Kathy Reichs
BOOK REVIEW
by Kathy Reichs
BOOK REVIEW
by Kathy Reichs
BOOK REVIEW
by Kathy Reichs
by Allen Eskens ‧ RELEASE DATE: Oct. 14, 2014
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
Share your opinion of this book
More by Allen Eskens
BOOK REVIEW
by Allen Eskens
BOOK REVIEW
by Allen Eskens
BOOK REVIEW
by Allen Eskens
© Copyright 2024 Kirkus Media LLC. All Rights Reserved.
Hey there, book lover.
We’re glad you found a book that interests you!
We can’t wait for you to join Kirkus!
It’s free and takes less than 10 seconds!
Already have an account? Log in.
OR
Sign in with GoogleTrouble signing in? Retrieve credentials.
Welcome Back!
OR
Sign in with GoogleTrouble signing in? Retrieve credentials.
Don’t fret. We’ll find you.