Grafton’s endless resourcefulness in varying her pitches in this landmark series (W Is for Wasted, 2013, etc.), graced by...
What does X stand for? Xanakis, XLNT, maybe even Father Xavier, all features of Kinsey Millhone’s dense, meaty 24th case.
The drought of 1989 is causing anxiety all over Santa Teresa, but money seems to have rained down on Kinsey’s latest client, Hallie Bettancourt, who’s seeking the current whereabouts of just-released robber Christian Satterfield, the son she had when she was only 15. Kinsey makes a few calls, rings a few bells, tracks down the address, and sends it on to the client, only to discover that everything Hallie told her, from her name to her relationship with Satterfield, was false. To add insult to injury, one of the $100 bills Hallie, or whoever she was, insisted on paying Kinsey is one of the same bills wealthy Ari Xanakis used two years ago to ransom a Turner painting back for $25,000 from his ex-wife, Teddy, who’d taken it upon herself to add it to the divorce settlement. Meanwhile, Kinsey’s gotten involved in another equally messy case, driven by her unwelcome suspicion that her late colleague Pete Wolinsky—hired years ago by salesman Ned Lowe’s attorney, Arnold Ruffner, to dig up dirt that would impeach the testimony of Taryn Sizemore, who’d accused him of harassment and stalking—had cast his net further and decided to blackmail either Lowe or someone else connected with the case. Showing as much initiative as Hallie or Pete and a lot more rectitude, Kinsey resolves to close the book on Pete’s shadowy game and to return a pair of sentimental religious keepsakes she’d found hidden in Pete’s files to their rightful owner. A droll drought-driven subplot revolving around Henry Pitts, Kinsey’s ancient landlord, is the icing on the cake.
Grafton’s endless resourcefulness in varying her pitches in this landmark series (W Is for Wasted, 2013, etc.), graced by her trademark self-deprecating humor, is one of the seven wonders of the genre.Pub Date: Aug. 25, 2015
ISBN: 978-0-399-16384-5
Page Count: 416
Publisher: Marian Wood/Putnam
Review Posted Online: June 2, 2015
Kirkus Reviews Issue: June 15, 2015
PERSPECTIVES
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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