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CHOKE

A middle-aged tennis pro who blew his chance at Wimbledon glory 20 years ago gets involved with a cardboard cast trying to cut each other out of the Key West landscape. At least that's how it's supposed to play out, though Woods (Imperfect Strangers, Jan. 1995, etc.) tends to forget choking Chuck Chandler once his murder plot gets in gear. When he first signs on at the Olde Island Tennis Club, though, Chuck is riding high as senior pro, teaching authority, and recipient of gorgeous Clare Carras's extramarital favors. Since Chuck doesn't know about three-timing Clare's liaison with still another man, it's not until after he finds the body of Clare's much older husband Harryrich, retired, and innocent of any credit listingunder broadly prejudicial circumstances that Chuck realizes Clare's been setting him up. Luckily for him, Det. Tommy Sculley, a new Key West cop with plenty of NYPD experience, realizes it too. So Tommy, along with pimply partner Daryl Haynes, goes up against his disapproving chief to dig up evidence that'll get poor Chuck off the hook. Item: the murder of a California p.i. on the trail of Harry and some big money. Item: Harry's checkered past as LA mob lawyer Rocco Marinello and as Ralph (Rock) Marin. Item: Clare's even more sordid past as a Vegas madam with an unexpected connection to a totally different suspect. Item: the other suspect's history of indiscriminate philandering. As the noose tightens, and you're wondering what's happened to Chuck, you may start to notice that minus the bikinied babes, the frequent recreational sex, and the female treachery, Woods's guileless mystery and wide-eyed hero make him sound an awful lot like a male Mary Higgins Clark. A fleet, mindless tale that doesn't include a thing, from the slightest unexpected plot twist to the ghost of an original idea, that might slow you down to its nominal hero's speed. (Author tour)

Pub Date: Oct. 11, 1995

ISBN: 0-06-017667-9

Page Count: 288

Publisher: HarperCollins

Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010

Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 1, 1995

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A CONSPIRACY OF BONES

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

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THE LIFE WE BURY

Eskens’ debut is a solid and thoughtful tale of a young man used to taking on burdens beyond his years—none more dangerous...

A struggling student’s English assignment turns into a mission to solve a 30-year-old murder.

Joe Talbert has had very few breaks in his 21 years. The son of a single and very alcoholic mother, he’s worked hard to save enough money to leave his home in Austin, Minnesota, for the University of Minnesota. Although he has to leave his autistic younger brother, Jeremy Naylor, to the dubious care of their mother, Joe is determined to beat the odds and get his degree. For an assignment in his English class, he decides to interview Carl Iverson, a man convicted of raping and killing a 14-year-old girl. Carl, who maintains his innocence, is dying of cancer and has been released to a nursing home to end his life in lonely but unrepentant pain. The more Joe learns about Carl—a Vietnam vet with two Purple Hearts and a Silver Cross—the more the young man questions the conviction. Joe’s plan to write a short biography and earn an easy A turns into something more. Even after his mother is arrested for drunk driving and guilt-trips Joe into ransacking his college fund to bail her out, he soldiers on with the project, though her irresponsibility forces him to take Jeremy into his care. But it’s his younger brother who cracks the code of the long-dead murder victim’s secret diary and an attractive neighbor, Lila Nash, who has her own agenda for helping Joe solve the mystery, whatever the risk. 

Eskens’ debut is a solid and thoughtful tale of a young man used to taking on burdens beyond his years—none more dangerous than championing a bitter old man convicted of a horrific crime.

Pub Date: Oct. 14, 2014

ISBN: 978-1-61614-998-7

Page Count: 300

Publisher: Seventh Street Books

Review Posted Online: Oct. 8, 2014

Kirkus Reviews Issue: Oct. 15, 2014

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