The balance of identities is well-explored by Gayle (My Summer of Southern Discomfort, 2007), who follows the thread not...
A former NYPD cop has the skills but can’t quite adjust to local politics and a less formal approach to power after his turn from big city to small town.
After Rick, his long-term partner on the NYPD, is killed in a bust gone wrong, Thomas Lynch decides to try small-town life, and Idyll is about as small as towns get in Connecticut. Lynch feels guilty not because he had a hand in Rick’s downfall but because he didn’t give him a hand up. He knew that Rick had gotten himself addicted to the drugs collected from crime scenes, but he couldn’t bear to force his friend into rehab. Even though he’s in a position of power as the chief of police in his new role, Lynch can’t commit to being part of the local Idyll force. Maybe it’s reluctance to get close after Rick’s death. Maybe it’s the small-town lifestyle he can’t buy into; having neighbors discuss the state of his lawn in depth isn’t something Lynch feels prepared for. There's one other thing that separates Lynch from his underlings: he’s gay. Not the type to share this sort of information at work, especially given the intolerance of the 1990s, Lynch is pressed toward full disclosure when his orientation becomes relevant to the town’s only murder case. There’s no motive or witnesses in the shooting death of Cecilia North, though Lynch fears he may have been one of the last people to see her alive. If he can explain to his officers what he was doing with a strange man in an abandoned cabin, where Lynch unexpectedly ran into the vic, he could cut the investigation short, but at what cost?
The balance of identities is well-explored by Gayle (My Summer of Southern Discomfort, 2007), who follows the thread not just through her protagonist, but as an intrinsic part of the plot. Strong enough to kick off a series.Pub Date: Sept. 8, 2015
ISBN: 978-1-63388-078-8
Page Count: 284
Publisher: Seventh Street Books
Review Posted Online: July 14, 2015
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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