Forensic evaluator Dr. Sylvia Strange takes time off from diagnosing murderous sociopaths to investigate the case of a little girl who refuses to talk. Of course, dealing with the girl she comes to know as Serena isn't such a change of pace after all, even though Sylvia would never know that from the phone call that jerks her awake one night. The child who piloted an auto away from the scene of a brutal execution, and into the path of an oncoming train, obviously isn't mute because of an illness or physiological condition; there's some psychological trauma behind her refusal to speak. The exact reason Serena won't talk is a mystery, but there's no mystery about the horrific life she's been forced to lead lately, bereft of her parents (whoever they are) and her murdered protector, and stalked by Lorenzo Santos Portillo, a maniacally determined assassin who shrugs off protective custody, security guards, and Sylvia's attack dog and just keeps on coming. As Sylvia and her fiancÇ, New Mexico State cop Matt England, puzzle over the pieces of Serena's background—and her relation to death row inmate Cash Wheeler and well-heeled Noelle Harding—Renzo keeps switching gears but not missions, preparing to execute Serena as she sleeps in Sylvia's spare room or in the hospital where she's been stashed. It's ghoulish fun watching this present-day Terminator get into position over and over without delivering the knockout blow, but the child-in-jeopardy genre, though it focuses Lovett's energetic portraits of evil better than the sprawling Dangerous Attachments (1995) and Acquired Motives (1996), also gives her patient hit-man, fueled on synthetic heroin yet mysteriously never out of control, an almost soothingly ritualistic quality. This guy is so unstoppable you can't believe he's really going to kill the kiddie before Sylvia can make her diagnosis. Less wildly over the top, but also less distinctive, than Lovett's striking first two. Fans of endangered children will probably do better sticking with Abigail Padgett.
Pub Date: Feb. 1, 1998
ISBN: 0-679-43561-1
Page Count: 320
Publisher: Villard
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Dec. 15, 1997
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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