Since so many characters have skin in the game, it’s virtually impossible to invest heavily in any of the players: too many...
A freelancing lawyer investigates a cold case involving a new friend’s grandfather, who disappeared after a dispute over Native American lands.
Philip Lone Deer has a habit of calling his friend Cal Claxton before daybreak to arrange fly-fishing trips on the spur of the moment. Cal’s usually game; that’s the kind of luxury being a self-employed lawyer affords you, just as Portland is a far cry from his job as a prosecutor in LA. The two are enjoying the waters when Philip invites Cal to a 50-year commemoration of the flooding of Celilo Falls and the building of the Dalles Dam. At the celebration, Philip introduces Cal to his cousin Winona Cloud, who implores Cal to look into a cold case involving the day the river was closed. Winona’s grandfather Nelson Queah hasn’t been seen since that day, though there was a report that he drunkenly stumbled into the river and drowned. A proud war hero and member of the Wasco tribe, Queah left behind a series of letters to his wife that humanize his desire to save the river and tell Cal that Winona’s suspicion of foul play may be right. Agreeing to take the case, partly because he’s drawn to beautiful, intelligent Winona, Cal’s thrust almost immediately into an unresolved battle over the land and the money related to it. It doesn’t matter that 50 years have gone by; someone is determined to kill those connected to the original construction of the dam, and Cal too, if he gets in the way. Cal has to use the survival skills he’s honed in his short time in Portland (Never Look Down, 2015, etc.) to protect himself and maybe solve the mystery of Queah’s death as well.
Since so many characters have skin in the game, it’s virtually impossible to invest heavily in any of the players: too many suspects leaves little room for human connection.Pub Date: June 7, 2016
ISBN: 978-1-4642-0613-9
Page Count: 302
Publisher: Poisoned Pen
Review Posted Online: March 16, 2016
Kirkus Reviews Issue: April 1, 2016
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
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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