Earnest, heavier than usual on old-fashioned detective work, and ritualistic to a fault. If you’re surprised by anything...
Marshal Virgil Cole and Deputy Marshall Everett Hitch face what amounts to an underground range war in Appaloosa.
The minute rancher James McCormick found gold on the parcel of land he’d purchased from Henri Baptiste, Baptiste rued the sale and tried everything he could to persuade McCormick and his brother, Daniel, to sell it back. The measures the Baptiste Group took included hiring seven gunslingers headed by fearsome Victor Bartholomew to intimidate the McCormicks and their miners, two of whom have now vanished. Nothing daunted, the McCormicks have engaged Edward Hodge and some gunmen of their own. As each side swaggers and threatens and waits for the other to back down, tensions rise across the town’s 4,000 souls. But dressmaker Allie French, Cole’s sweetie, still keeps her sights fixed firmly on Appaloosa Days, the celebration of local culture she’s enticed visiting actress/singer Martha Kathryn to join. Since sparks have instantly flown between Martha and Hitch, the lawmen have an even greater stake than usual in keeping the peace. But that promises to be harder than they know. An unnamed kid has broken out of jail, traced his roots to Appaloosa, and set his course for the troubled town, apparently robbing and killing everyone in his path except for a teamster’s wife whose Amazonian figure makes her even more intimidating than him. In short order, she takes him to bed, stokes the fires of his quest for vengeance, and tags along to provide logistical support. Cole and Hitch, who’ve now appeared in more novels written by Knott (Robert B. Parker’s Revelation, 2017, etc.) than by their creator, have little to do but stand around, tote up the rising body count and occasionally augment it, and offer gruffly monosyllabic responses to questions that come their way as the perfect storm gathers to strike their hometown.
Earnest, heavier than usual on old-fashioned detective work, and ritualistic to a fault. If you’re surprised by anything that happens, you need to read more Westerns.Pub Date: May 7, 2019
ISBN: 978-0-7352-1827-7
Page Count: 336
Publisher: Putnam
Review Posted Online: March 30, 2019
Kirkus Reviews Issue: April 15, 2019
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
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
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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