Parker slides into a gentle sophomore slump with his second mystery thriller. For all its deep characters and exotic action, this byzantine tale of Vietnam-seeded intrigue—set like his first in Orange County, Cal.—lacks the pungent ironies and manual-tight police procedures that made Laguna Heat such a fabulous and popular read. Part of the problem is that, despite his bumbling charms, hero Chuck Frye, ex-reporter and surfing star, scion of Laguna's wealthiest family, simply isn't as gripping a hero as Laguna Heat's cop hero. Parker compensates somewhat, however, by setting Chuck's adventures mostly within Orange County's huge and vastly intriguing Vietnamese community. Chuck's link to this clannish brood is lovely Li, Vietnamese wife of his older brother, Benny, war hero—he lacks the legs to prove it—and ace real-estate developer. When Li, a folk heroine to the community for her freedom songs, is kidnapped during a fete, the Frye family galvanizes to get her back. Trouble for Chuck is, Benny and his tyrannical dad just want him to stay out of the way: after all, he was the one swimming with little sister when she drowned 20 years before. That burden of guilt impels Chuck to search for Li, and before long he's deep in a self-made mess, finding and then losing the Vietnamese teen hood possibly behind the snatch, losing a videotape Benny's asked him to stash, and landing in jail when the local cops decide he's just too meddlesome. An affair with the new blond on the block soothes Chuck for a bit, but soon he jumps back into the muck, digging up evidence of a plot by old family friends and Vietnamese gangsters to use stolen monies to fund a real-estate deal, and finally unearthing Li's real kidnapper—a freedom-fighter-turned-commie betrayed by Benny in Vietnam. Par for California thrillers, here the sins of the past ravage the present, and after final bloodbaths Chuck has lost his brother but refound his pride, that blond, and entrÉe into his family. The Chandleresque plotting is so coiled as to nearly implode at times, and Chuck's redemption is too expected; withal, Parker remains a vivid stylist and an ultra-acute observer of California ways, with this uneven but still memorable work further proof that he's no flash in the pan, but a glowing fixture in the thriller firmament.
Pub Date: Sept. 27, 1988
ISBN: 0312357141
Page Count: 436
Publisher: St. Martin's
Review Posted Online: April 5, 2012
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 15, 1988
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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