Kelly (Death, Taxes, and a Satin Garter, 2016, etc.) keeps her writing basic. Though occasional harsh words suggest uglier...
A cop and her police-dog partner go undercover in hopes of finding who’s dealing drugs from the local university.
When local Texas Christian University student Miranda Hernandez loses consciousness at the Independence Day celebration, it’s more than a case of overheating in the Texas sun. Apparently there’s a drug called Molly, also known as ecstasy, that’s been developing a local following, and TCU students have been known to be buyers. Fort Worth Police Officer Megan Luz is surprised to learn about the seedier side of her small town, given that her life revolves around walks in the park with her boyfriend and their police dogs, Blast (his) and Brigit (hers). Megan agrees to go undercover at TCU to try to find out who dealt to Miranda so the guilty party can be held accountable. Throughout this, third-person chapters alternate with chapters from Megan’s point of view, as she makes friends with her college classmates while Brigit enjoys the smells of the campus quad, and chapters from the perspective of the unknown drug dealer, who may have committed to more than he’s ready for. Though Megan is certain the perp is somewhere on campus, not everyone at the station is convinced, and Megan finds herself wondering if fellow cop Derek Mackey might be somehow involved, though her instinct tells her he’s just a jerk rather than a drug-dealing jerk. Pressure to maintain her cover keeps Megan on the defensive during a night out that could prove the break in the case, so long as Megan can trust Brigit to keep them both safe.
Kelly (Death, Taxes, and a Satin Garter, 2016, etc.) keeps her writing basic. Though occasional harsh words suggest uglier depths in her simple story, her characters are straightforward enough to appeal to readers looking for amiability without complexity.Pub Date: Dec. 6, 2016
ISBN: 978-1-250-09484-1
Page Count: 320
Publisher: St. Martin's
Review Posted Online: Oct. 18, 2016
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Nov. 1, 2016
BOOK REVIEW
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
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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