A stylish and thoughtful crime novel.
An unemployed war veteran investigates a tragic crime in Gates’ 1960-set mystery novel, the second in a series.
Harry Cogbill has gotten himself fired again. This time it’s from the combination restaurant-gift shop across the river from his home in King George County, Virginia, where he worked as a grill cook. After getting startled by a New York mafioso in the restaurant, Cogbill, a shell-shocked World War II vet, blacked out and roughed up his boss. His unemployment is not well received by his wife, Ethel Burkitt, who wants better things for Harry and isn’t afraid to give him the cold shoulder to force him in the right direction. A few days after the firing, while hunting for a new job, Harry learns that one of his co-workers at the restaurant, William Johnson, is now wanted for stabbing a man to death. Harry can’t believe the young Black man—a good kid—would do such a thing and assumes he’s being scapegoated. After speaking to the young man’s family, Cogbill learns the still-at-large William did commit the murder, though Cogbill can’t figure out why. Putting his job search on hold, Cogbill turns amateur detective—a role he’s played in the past—in order to get to the bottom of the crime. Doing so, he’ll run up against the worst that King George County has to offer: transplant mobsters, local crooks, and the deeply entrenched racism of the South. Can Cogbill once again quiet his demons, catch the bad guys, and get back in good with his Ethel? Gates’ measured prose carries a tinge of the Southern Gothic, lending a biblical weight to the narrative: “The weather had turned cold and the sun had begun its annual retreat to the throne of judgment from which it cast its pale, solitary eye upon the grey and barren earth.” Though he trades in the tropes of the crime novel, Gates is most deeply interested in the psychology of his characters and the way they fit (or don’t) in the world. Fans of the previous Harry Cogbill novel will not be disappointed.
A stylish and thoughtful crime novel.Pub Date: N/A
ISBN: N/A
Page Count: -
Publisher: N/A
Review Posted Online: Aug. 31, 2024
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
BOOK REVIEW
Fast-moving excitement with a satisfying finish.
The feds must protect an accused criminal and an orphaned girl.
Maybe you’ve met him before as protagonist of The 6:20 Man (2022): Ex-Army Ranger Travis Devine, who’d had the dubious fortune to tangle with “the girl on the train,” is now assigned by his homeland security boss to protect Danny Glass, who's awaiting trial on multiple RICO charges in Washington state. Devine has what it takes: He “was a closer, snooper, fixer, investigator,” and, when necessary, a killer. These skills are on full display as the deaths of three key witnesses grind justice to a temporary halt. Glass has a 12-year-old niece, Betsy Odom, and each is the other’s only living relative—her parents recently died of an apparent drug overdose. The FBI has temporary guardianship of Betsy, who's a handful. She tells Travis that though she’s not yet 13, she's 28 in “life-shit years.” The financially well-heeled Glass wants to be her legal guardian with an eye to eventual adoption, but what are his real motives? And what happens to her if he's convicted? Meanwhile, Betsy insists that her parents never touched drugs, and she begs Travis to find out how they really died. This becomes part of a mission that oozes danger. The small town of Ricketts has a woman mayor who’s full of charm on the surface, but deeply corrupt and deadly when crossed. She may be linked to a subversive group called "12/24/65," as in 1865, when the Ku Klux Klan beast was born. Blood flows, bombs explode, and people perish, both good guys and not-so-good guys. Readers might ponder why in fiction as well as in life, it sometimes seems necessary for many to die so one may live. And what about the girl on the train? She's not necessary to the plot, but she's a fun addition as she pops in and out of the pages, occasionally leaving notes for Travis. Maybe she still wants him dead.
Fast-moving excitement with a satisfying finish.Pub Date: Nov. 12, 2024
ISBN: 9781538757901
Page Count: 432
Publisher: Grand Central Publishing
Review Posted Online: Sept. 14, 2024
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Oct. 15, 2024
One of those rare triple-deckers that’s actually worth every page, every complication, every bead of sweat.
A routine break-in at the home of Sûreté homicide chief Armand Gamache leads slowly but surely to the revelation of a potentially calamitous threat to all Québec.
At first it seems as if nothing at all triggered the burglar alarm at Gamache’s home in Three Pines; it was literally a false alarm. It’s not till he receives a package containing his summer jacket that Gamache realizes someone really did get into his house, choosing to steal exactly this one item and return it with a cryptic note referring to “some malady…water” and “Angelica stems.” Having already refused to meet with Jeanne Caron, chief of staff to Marcus Lauzon, a powerful politician who’s already taken vengeance on Gamache and his family for not expunging his child’s criminal record, Gamache now agrees to meet with Charles Langlois, a marine biologist with ties to Caron who confesses to a leading role in stealing Gamache’s jacket. Their meeting ends inconclusively for Gamache, who’s convinced that Langlois is hiding something weighty, and all too conclusively for Langlois, who’s killed by a hit-and-run driver as he leaves. The news that Langlois had been investigating a water supply near the abbey of Saint-Gilbert-Entre-les-Loups sends Gamache scurrying off to the abbey, where the plot steadily thickens until he’s led to ask how “an old recipe for Chartreuse” can possibly be connected to “a terrorist plot to poison Québec’s drinking water.” That’s a great question, and answering it will take the second half of this story, which spins ever more intricate connections among leading players that become deeply unsettling.
One of those rare triple-deckers that’s actually worth every page, every complication, every bead of sweat.Pub Date: Oct. 29, 2024
ISBN: 9781250328137
Page Count: 432
Publisher: Minotaur
Review Posted Online: July 19, 2024
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 15, 2024
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