Siegel’s dialogue crackles with pace and authenticity. His brisk narrative offers a nonstop barrage of cynical asides to the...
Sardonic Frisco attorney Michael Daley defends a popular priest against a murder charge.
Mike Daley (Final Verdict, 2003, etc.), back for a fifth outing, takes his monthly confession and follow-up lunch with old friend and one-time fellow seminarian Ramon Aguirre; Mike spent a short time in the priesthood before settling into a legal career, while Father Ramon has become a benevolent fixture in the Mission District. Mike shares news of significant other (and law partner and ex-wife) Rosie in her recovery from breast cancer; Ramon shares his sadness over the apparent suicide of parishioner Maria Conception, a workaholic lawyer and recent divorcée who, at the time of her death, was prosecuting the local archdiocese in a high-profile sexual harassment lawsuit. The evening after lunch together, Mike is stunned when Ramon calls and asks for help: he’s been arrested for Maria’s murder. Problems pile up even before they get to trial. Ramon is full of secrets about his relationship with Maria, and Mike learns them one uncomfortable piece at a time: Ramon and Maria were once lovers, Maria was pregnant when she died, and Ramon may have been the father (albeit via artificial insemination). The archdiocese has its own attorneys, the very corporate Quinn and Shanahan, who want the maverick Mike off the case. Chances of them putting Ramon’s interests ahead of the Church’s are slim, and they remain in a constant tug-of-war with Mike. Circumstantial evidence looks bad for Ramon, but Mike finds a handful of suspects with motive at local restaurant Eduardo’s Latin Palace. Maria was having an affair with owner Eduardo Lopez, who was also stepping out with hostess Mercedes Trujillo. Learning of his dalliances, Eduardo’s wife Vicki swore revenge. Maria’s client in the suit against the diocese comes forward with vital evidence—and is suspiciously killed before she can testify.
Siegel’s dialogue crackles with pace and authenticity. His brisk narrative offers a nonstop barrage of cynical asides to the reader—not to every taste.Pub Date: Aug. 23, 2004
ISBN: 0-399-15212-1
Page Count: 368
Publisher: Putnam
Review Posted Online: June 24, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 15, 2004
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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