I received a free advance copy of this from NetGalley for review.
A group of Bitcoin billionaires calling themselves The Five have appointed themselvesI received a free advance copy of this from NetGalley for review.
A group of Bitcoin billionaires calling themselves The Five have appointed themselves to clean up America by personally killing people they think are ruining the country. Their first victims include a violent street criminal, a corrupt right wing congressman, and a rich woman who made herself richer by putting people out of work.
Some might just call this asshole-on-asshole violence and be content to let it roll for a while, but it’s a bad idea to just let the billionaires move to their next natural phase of killing people because they’re bored. They’ll get there soon enough.
With bodies dropping across the country followed by press releases from The Five bragging about what they’re doing, the inevitable media shitstorm has started. When the latest victim is killed in Minnesota, our favorite Sandford heroes, Lucas Davenport and Virgil Flowers, get called in to help the FBI, and the two cops end up following twisted trails across the US as they start running down The Five.
This is once again Sandford doing his thing, and as usual, he does it well. It’s a solid page turner with an intriguing plot set-up, and there’s some fun character stuff with Lucas and Virgil as they entertain themselves by busting each other’s balls regularly.
However, I’m still not sold on this idea of Sandford teaming up his two biggest characters and merging what used to be two books a year into one. I know the man has certainly earned a rest at this point, but it seems like splitting time between Lucas and Virgil does something to the flow of the story so that it doesn’t hum with quite the same energy that their solo books do.
My other problem with this is one is that Lucas and Virgil don’t really do all that much. There’s a distinct lack of either of them coming up with any of their usual clever schemes or traps to draw out a bad guys, and most of their major breaks come from sheer luck. In fact, by the end of this one Lucas and Virgil seem like rubes who get caught flat footed again and again. Part of the appeal of the Sandford novels is that he has managed to take what could be outlandish action movie plots and ground them through the characters, so they don’t need to be heroes incapable of error. Both of them have made plenty of mistakes in their own books. It’s just in this one that they don’t really seem to impact the plot all that much other than just stumbling into a couple of things.
Still, it’s a Sandford book, and those just make me happy so I won’t bitch too much....more
The 1995 film Heat is one of my favorite movies of all time so I was both excited and scared to check this book out. Sequels to things you loved decadThe 1995 film Heat is one of my favorite movies of all time so I was both excited and scared to check this book out. Sequels to things you loved decades ago can go either way. For every totally awesome Top Gun: Maverick there’s an abomination like Ghostbusters: Afterlife.
So how did Heat 2 do? Much better than Afterlife, but not as well as Maverick.
Writer/director Michael Mann teamed up with veteran crime novelist Meg Gardiner to give us a story that is equal parts prequel and sequel. The story bounces between the '80s when professional thief Neil McCauley and his crew were pulling jobs while cop Vincent Hanna is desperately trying to stop another group of criminals conducting brutal home invasions that include rape and murder. The sequel thread that starts in 1995 involves one of the survivors of the original film trying to escape the cops and what happens in the subsequent years. An old loose end that ties the whole Heat story together eventually draws characters back into the same orbit, but none of them realize this at first.
As just a crime novel, this works pretty well. Mann knows how to do stories about heists, and there’s a couple of great ones in this. There’s interesting background information we learn about the characters that adds some depth to them. The dialogue hits as it did in the film so that when a character speaks, you can hear the actor who portrayed them in 1995 saying the lines. This is particularly true of Vincent Hanna where it's very easy to imagine a younger Al Pacino belting some of these out with his own brand of gusto.
The thing I thought didn’t work as well is what happens in the sequel portion when we jump forward to 2000. At this point the crime aspect isn’t about heists, it’s more about high tech black market computer gear with international organized crime.. That feels like it's borrowing elements from more recent Mann movies such as Blackhat or Miami Vice. There's interesting stuff here, but it felt like the book turned into something else then.
Also, there’s no getting around the fact that Mann is a filmmaker so a lot of his appeal is visual in nature. Yes, he can create great characters who speak snappy dialogue filled with a lot of cool lingo, and he and Gardiner set the scene well. But I felt myself longing to see the action play out on a big screen with amazing locations, a killer soundtrack, and Mann’s distinctive screen style rather than just reading it. It also leaves a lot left hanging so it’s not entirely satisfying to wait almost three decades for a follow up that still has more to come.
Still, more of this works than doesn’t, and I enjoyed it. It was a real treat to revisit this fictional world again. It’s 3.5 stars rounded up to 4....more
I received a free advance copy of this from NetGalley for review.
In these troubled and complicated times, it’s nice to be able to read a book set in aI received a free advance copy of this from NetGalley for review.
In these troubled and complicated times, it’s nice to be able to read a book set in a small town in Mississippi where the people still have old time family values and the problems of the modern world never intrude on them.
And if you actually believe that I can tell you don’t really know anything about American small towns at all.
As usual, there’s big trouble in Tibbehah County, and Sheriff Quinn Colson has to deal with it. The most pressing problem is that a barfly named Gina Byrd has vanished, and when evidence of foul play turns up, her troubled teenage daughter TJ is the prime suspect. TJ is the kind of tough-as-nails poor kid who has no use or respect for the law so despite her claims that she’s innocent, TJ goes on the run with her boyfriend, her best friend, and her younger brother. When they encounter a rich girl with her own problems and a very active Instagram account, TJ’s crime spree goes viral while she continues to claim that her mother’s boyfriend is the real guilty party.
Quinn has a further complication because his former deputy turned US Marshal, Lillie Virgil, was a friend to the missing woman who automatically believes the worst about TJ, and she goes on a personally motivated hunt for the girl and her half-assed gang despite Quinn’s belief that their might be some truth to TJ’s story. Meanwhile, an old enemy of Quinn’s has returned and is quietly rebuilding his criminal empire as he tries to use the media firestorm around TJ to his own advantage. Adding to the mess are the utterly disgusting and psychotic father & son house painters who also moonlight as thugs for hire.
Ace Atkins spent several of the previous books bringing several plots to a head which culminated nicely in the last one so this seems like a turning point in the series. There’s still a lot of the same characters, and previous events still have on-going consequences, but this feels like a new phase in the adventures of Quinn Colson is beginning. It’s a helluva good start, too.
Atkins continues to nail the whole vibe of a small town from its low key charms and the complex relationships among people who know each other all too well. He also shows clear vision when exploring the flaws of some folks like the stomach turning hypocrisy or stubborn nostalgia for times that weren’t really all that great.
There’s another interesting factor in play here. Atkins sometimes likes to slyly play off other fiction. For example, in one of his Spenser books he recreated a scene from True Grit, and he also used a darker version of The Dukes of Hazard as a template for another Quinn Colson novel. Here, I get the distinct impression that the inspiration may have been an ‘80s movie called The Legend of Billie Jean although it’s been a very long time since I’ve seen that one so take this observation with a grain of salt.
Overall, it’s Atkins doing his usual thing of telling a rural crime story with social commentary mixed in, and there's damn few writers who can do it as well as he does....more
I received a free advance copy from NetGalley for review.
Ocean Spray? What kind of a name is that for a book? What’s it about? The history of the drinI received a free advance copy from NetGalley for review.
Ocean Spray? What kind of a name is that for a book? What’s it about? The history of the drink? Or is it a biography of the guy who made the viral video of him skateboarding and drinking Ocean Spray while he lip synced that Fleetwood Mac song? I mean, that was cool and all, but how are you gonnna do a whole book about… What’s that? It’s not Ocean SPRAY, but instead it’s Ocean PREY? Well, that sounds like a John Sandford title. Oh. It is a John Sandford novel.
That makes a lot more sense.
A Coast Guard patrol runs across what appears to be drug runners doing a pick-up of previously submerged dope out of the ocean using a scuba diver off the coast of Miami. A shootout ensues that leaves several Coast Guard guys dead while the bad guys got away. Months later the FBI and local cops still have no clue as to who was behind it, and the prevailing theory is that there’s still a fortune in drugs waiting to be picked up once the heat dies down.
US Marshal Lucas Davenport gets asked to join the investigation by one of his political patrons in DC, and he quickly starts leaning on local dealers trying to get a lead on who might have been involved with the drug ring. As usual in a Davenport case, things start to get sticky, and when Lucas needs more help he turns to his old buddy, Virgil Flowers (a/k/a That fuckin’ Flowers.) to help him crack the case.
I’ve written so many Sandford reviews that I can’t think of a single new thing to say about why this one is another great crime thriller from one of my favorites in the genre. As usual, there’s solid plotting and tension mixed with just enough real world verisimilitude regarding police work and the political factors behind it to make it feel grounded and believable despite a plot that could easily turn into an action movie from the ‘80s. All the things I love about Sandford’s novels are on display here.
However, there are some very different things in this one. For one, ever since Sandford shifted Davenport from a Minnesota state cop to a US Marshal, he’s been sending Lucas on assignments across the country, and that has enabled him to do some different things with this series while still sticking to the parts that made it popular to begin with. Moving from typically land locked Midwestern settings to a Florida one that has a lot to do with boats and scuba diving makes it feel like Sandford is doing new things rather than just repeating himself.
That’s just the window dressing though, and the biggest difference from previous Prey novels comes in the structure itself. In the past, Lucas was the star of the these books, and then there was the spin-off series featuring Virgil Flowers as the lead. They existed in the same universe with some crossover between them, but generally one of the characters was the focus with the other being a supporting player. However, in this Lucas is the focus in the first third with Virgil taking over the next part, and the last act shifts between them both.
I assume that this is because Sandford has said that he’s only going to do one book a year from now on*, and it seems like he folded Virgil into Davenport’s story much like Robert Crais began splitting time between Elvis Cole and Joe Pike in his novels. That gives this book a hybrid feel in that it doesn’t entirely seem like a Davenport novel, and yet it’s not exactly Virgil’s book either.
It’s a little odd. Not bad, just different. Sandford is in his late 70s now, and he’s written about 50 novels after a career as a Pulitzer Prize winning journalist. If he had decided to retire completely, he’d have more than earned the right to do so at this point. So if I can get some more of his stories because he’s cutting his work load and figuring out a way to combine his two most popular characters, you won’t hear me complaining about it.
Aside from all that, if someone had never read another Sandford book and just picked this one up, I think they’d find it an entertaining crime novel with some great twists as well as an interesting premise with the angle of the bad guys trying to find a way to retrieve a fortune in drugs from the ocean.
*Correction: I originally said that Sandford would only be doing the Davenport series from now on, but apparently plan is for him to scale book to one book a year while alternating the Prey and Virgil Flowers books....more
I received a free advance copy of this from NetGalley for review.
A completely immoral man has taken charge of the government, and the wave of corruptiI received a free advance copy of this from NetGalley for review.
A completely immoral man has taken charge of the government, and the wave of corruption and racism he unleashed is completely undermining the rule of law. Welcome to America. Oops. I meant – Welcome to Tibbehah County, Mississippi.
I can’t imagine how I mixed that up…
As Sheriff Quinn Colson is recovering after being shot, the new shithead governor is cutting deals with criminals and the filthy rich while blaming everything wrong with the world on immigrants and liberals. So Quinn is sidelined while the new local crime boss, Fannie Hathcock, expands her operation with the assistance of the crooked temporary sheriff appointed by the gov. If that’s not enough to worry about, Quinn also has a pregnant wife about to deliver a baby, the old friend he sent to prison for selling automatic weapons just got released, and he’s getting a touch too fond of the painkillers he’s been taking…
Ace Atkins has been working up to this point for several books, and while current events were certainly a big influence on it, he never loses the story threads and themes he’s developed over the course of the series. As always, while Quinn is the focus there’s a lot of time spent with other people so that Tibbehah County is a complete world in which every character has their own story. Whether it’s Quinn’s nephew struggling to help a young immigrant girl whose mother has been arrested and is about to be deported, or Fannie Hathcock ruthlessly running her small empire, it all feels like this is a bunch of real people whose lives get tangled up in various ways as they pursue their own agendas.
The structure of the series has been to tell a fairly self-contained story in each one while leaving some threads dangling to pick up in the next book, but this has more of a wrap-up feel to it with Atkins delivering some definite conclusions to several of the plots that have been on the boil for a while now. The payoffs are well done overall, and as usual, nothing in Tibbehah County goes exactly according to plan.
The only problem is one I’ve seen in other books based on the political events of the last few years. Essentially, I think crime writers tend to do stories about justice being done in some fashion, and they just couldn’t imagine how bad things would actually get when they were working on these books a year or two ago. (Life comes at you fast these days.) So in this current hellscape when it often feels like the entire justice system has broken down, and there’s no scandal that can’t be spun on Fox News, a book like this can end up feeling kind of naïve and simplistic.
As I’ve noted in other reviews with similar problems, I don’t blame the authors for this because think about what I’m really saying here. – The problem with a book in which a criminal governor takes over a state and fills it with corrupt officials is that it isn't cynical enough because reality has proven to be so much worse.
That’s pretty fucked up.
So again, I don’t really count it as a strike against the books or Atkins’ plotting. It’s just that it’s really tough for creators to come up with stories that could have imagined the depths we’d sink to so fast with little hope of the good guys winning.
Setting that aside, it’s always a pleasure to check in with Quinn and what’s going on in Tibbehah, and it was nice to get some satisfying conclusions to several of the on-going stories with the prospect of a doozy of a new one now hanging out there....more
Jo Greaver is a successful businesswoman, but she’s being extorted by someone who has discovered her old secrets, and she goes to the meeting with a bJo Greaver is a successful businesswoman, but she’s being extorted by someone who has discovered her old secrets, and she goes to the meeting with a bag of cash and a pistol. One gunfight later and there’s a body on the floor of an apartment, and an injured Jo is on the run. For NYPD detectives Sheryn Sterling and Rafael Mendoza, this should simply be a matter of tracking down Jo, but there’s much more to this blackmail scheme than it would seem at first
This is my second Hillary Davidson novel, and I enjoyed it quite a bit. It’s got a nicely twisty plot that doesn’t go where you think it will at first, and Sheryn continues to make for a compelling lead character in this second book in the series. There’s also nice New York vibe to the story which ranges from a decrepit apartment building to the homes of the obscenely wealthy....more
Jason Aaron had a pretty cool idea here for one piece of the whole Secret Wars storyline. Following the whole MarvelYou can never have too many Thors.
Jason Aaron had a pretty cool idea here for one piece of the whole Secret Wars storyline. Following the whole Marvel multiverse going KERBLOOEY, Doctor Doom has cobbled together a planet made up of various fragments from all these realities, and of course he reshaped it so that that he rules it all. To keep order of this mess he’s got a bunch of Thors who act like a police department and enforce the law.
Having a bunch of Thors behaving like police officers is fun, and Aaron added a dash of David Simon so that you can see elements of Homicide and The Wire to give it that cop vibe. Ultimate Thor and Beta Ray Bill are detectives trying to solve a bizarre string of serial murders, and the case is the kind of high profile furball that can cost a cop his hammer. Along with them we also see various other Thors including other Marvel characters who are now worthy like Storm and Groot.
It’s a really interesting way to do one of these multiverse things with variations of the same character interacting with each other. Unfortunately, it was just done in service of the larger Secret Wars story so it’s too short at 4 issues and doesn’t feel like the full potential was explored. Still, it was one of the more creative angles I’ve read to one of these things so it was well worth a read....more
Jesse Stone takes a few days off from being police of chief in Paradise to attend a reunion of his old minor league baseball club that has been put toJesse Stone takes a few days off from being police of chief in Paradise to attend a reunion of his old minor league baseball club that has been put together by Vic Prado, one of his former teammates who made it to the majors where he had a successful career. Vic is the guy who made the throw that got Jesse hurt and ended his own dreams of baseball glory. He also stole Jesse’s girlfriend at the time and later married her.
And you thought your high school reunion was awkward….
It turns out that after baseball Vic has gotten involved in a shady financial scheme with a dangerous Boston gangster for a partner, and now that the walls are closing in he was hoping to ask for Jesse’s help. However, Vic’s plan goes off the rails almost immediately which gets a young college girl killed and her wealthy boyfriend kidnapped back in Paradise. As Jesse tries to figure out what’s going on he’ll have to deal with the asshole father of the missing boy, a dangerous hit man, and a mysterious new love interest who has her own agenda regarding Vic. If that isn’t enough, seeing Vic opens up a lot of old emotional wounds that make it even harder than usual for Jesse to keep the cork in the Scotch bottle.
This is a fairly odd situation. Robert B. Parker started this series late in his career, and while he tried to make Jesse different his best known creation, Spenser, he was so locked into certain themes and his own sparse style that Jesse came across as just an internalized drunk who was unhealthily obsessed with his ex-wife. Which might work if you’re trying to make a flawed lead character, but RBP also couldn’t really let go of trying to make Jesse a Spenser-esque hero, either.
Then after RBP’s death his family had Michael Brandman carry on the Jesse Stone series, and since Brandman had been a producer/screenwriter on a pretty good set of TV movies based on the books that seemed like a solid choice. However, the three books Brandman did weren't good with Jesse coming across as a terrible cop who abused his authority for minor matters while ignoring bigger crimes.
I assume the fan response to Brandman was why Reed Farrel Coleman replaced him, and the results are promising in this first attempt. The biggest difference is in character work because RBP pretty much just worked off established templates in his later books so everybody seemed thin and one note. Here, Coleman spends time building up all the major players so that they all have inner lives and a distinct point of view. Coleman manages to build up some nobility and sympathy for a villain who seems irredeemable at the start, and even an entitled star athlete like Vic who is entirely motivated by self-interest has a world view a reader can understand.
In Coleman’s hands Jesse finally seems like a wholly realized person, and not like some shambling Frankenstein’s monster made up of random bits leftover from RBP's files and unproduced screenplays. He’s still an internalized guy who is struggling to cope with alcoholism, but he’s more self-aware of his flaws instead of seeming like a robot fueled by Scotch. While Jesse still has many of the tough-guy traits you’d expect in this kind of series, he also seems more like a decent guy doing his best rather than someone who thinks he’s above normal human interactions.
It’s not a home run of a book. The plot wanders somewhat, and I found the way that several of the bad guys suddenly develop consciences late in the book unbelievable. I also wasn’t wild that while wrapping up most of the story that it ends on a big cliffhanger.
Still, this was a Jesse Stone book that I mostly liked so maybe the third writer is the charm. 3.5 stars....more
I saw Hilary Davidson at Bouchercon in 2011 when she was promoting her first novel. She had some interesting things to say so I made a mental note to I saw Hilary Davidson at Bouchercon in 2011 when she was promoting her first novel. She had some interesting things to say so I made a mental note to get a copy. 8 years later I finally got around to reading her 5th novel.
Hey, I’ve been busy!
Alex Traynor went to a war zone as a photojournalist and came back to New York with a whopping case of PTSD that had him self-medicating with the help of his friend and drug dealer, Cori. Unfortunately, Cori died after falling off the roof Alex’s apartment under suspicious circumstances. NYPD detective Sheryn Sterling is convinced that Alex killed Cori in the midst of a drug fueled freakout, but Alex’s girlfriend Emily provided an alibi. However, now Emily has gone missing while Alex relapsed and had a lost weekend. Sterling is determined to not let Alex get away with it again, but Alex has no memory of what happened to Emily. So where is she?
This is a nice take on a mystery because we’ve got a dogged detective pursuing the truth even as her prime suspect is doing the same, and for a good chunk of the story we’re not sure which one of them we should be rooting for. There’s some good twists, and the ultimate resolution manages the tricky task of not being obvious while not entirely coming out of left field either. I particularly liked one of the bigger revelations we get at the end.
It’s a little repetitive in spots as if Davidson doesn’t entirely trust the reader to remember the characters' histories, but it doesn’t get annoying. It’s also just a shade too long with an extra bit at the end that I didn’t really need, but again, it’s not too much to overlook.
I’d go 3.5 if I could, but I’ll round up to 4 since it took me way too long to finally check out Davidson’s work. Better late than never....more
I hate to see anybody lose their job, but I understand why Michael Brandman was replaced as the writer of this series.
Small town police chief Jesse StI hate to see anybody lose their job, but I understand why Michael Brandman was replaced as the writer of this series.
Small town police chief Jesse Stone has two big problems. First, after a young female prostitute is murdered in a seedy motel Jesse has to first identify her, and then try to find her killer which puts him in between a couple of rival pimps. Second, Jesse suspects that the local nursing home is both negligent and abusive in its care of its elderly residents, but the company that owns it has already survived one scandal thanks to an army of lawyers so getting it shut down won’t be easy.
As I’ve noted in the reviews of the other two Brandman books I’m baffled at how badly he whiffs on these because he was a producer and screenwriter of several TV movies starring Tom Selleck based on this character, and they’re actually pretty good. So having him take over after Robert B. Parker’s death seemed like a no-brainer.
He did some stuff I like such as having Jesse finally get over his awful ex-wife and address his drinking problem. Yet, he comes across as incredibly bad at his job. In these recent books Jesse seems to fixate on trivial aspects of what’s going on while ignoring major things, and he generally delegates most of the work to other people. There are also several examples of abuses of power by a police chief. So the character has become inconsistent, incompetent, and just a bad cop all around even as he’s still presented as our hero.
Part of the problem is that the world created here just doesn’t make a lot of sense. Any fictional story about a cop, particularly a series like this, is going to have stretch things past the point of reality, but this gets too far off the rails. For example, one of the suspects in the woman's murder wants to kill Jesse later in the book and word gets out. Several people act like Jesse is all on his own, and that he should drop the case. Even one of his own police officer's tells him to forget about the investigation. That’s completely unbelievable, that everyone acts like a police chief is so at risk from one minor criminal that he’d consider dropping a murder investigation. Cops just don’t operate like that, even small town ones.
Another crazy thing is that when Jesse starts going after the crooked rest home we hear a lot about how this company has enormous influence and power. Yet when Jesse starts using local fire and health inspections to get the place cited their response is to first try and bribe him, and then later several of the people in charge go after Jesse and other cops physically. That’s not how white collar criminals do things. Even if they had financial problems they’d just declare bankruptcy and find a way to walk off with a bunch of cash and come up with a new scheme.
There’s also some lazy inconsistencies. Jesse had a cat in the last book, and every time he goes home Brandman made a point to have him interact with the cat who is all over him. Here, we follow Jesse through his evening routine as he’s thinking about what’s going on a couple of times without a single mention of the cat. Yet, late in the book the cat just shows up again with no explanation as to why he wasn’t around earlier.
Another one is that per the earlier books in the series and the TV movies, Jesse doesn’t wear a police uniform. Brandman never describes what he’s wearing on the job here, but I assumed he was still wearing civilian clothes but it’s never made clear. In one scene, Jesse borrows a nightstick from one of his officers to beat the shit out of some people so you think that he is not walking around with all the gear that a uniformed police officer would be. However, in the very next chapter Brandman has Jesse pull a nightstick off his own service belt without ever explaining why Jesse would need to borrow one in the previous chapter, and the way it’s presented here is that he always has one on him.
It’s a parade of things like that which make Brandman’s run on this series such a mess. It’s ill-defined and sloppy in many ways while he focused on trying to do the Robert B. Parker style of dialogue. He doesn’t really pull that off either....more
Pop quiz. If you were the chief of police in a small town, which of these issues would be your top priority?
1) A movie production has started filming,Pop quiz. If you were the chief of police in a small town, which of these issues would be your top priority?
1) A movie production has started filming, and in addition to all the logistical headaches that creates, the lead actress is worried about her safety because she’s trying to divorce her drug addicted husband who has physically assaulted her in the past.
2) Officials at the local water company may have been rigging the meter readings to overcharge customers which would be a criminal conspiracy that affected the entire town.
3) One bratty rich girl keeps driving while texting despite repeated warnings.
If you answered #3, congratulations! You’d be just as bad a cop as Jesse Stone.
To be fair, the rich brat did cause a serious traffic accident, and her parents are major league assholes so it is a legit problem. However, while facing the other two issues Jesse chooses to delegate most everything related to the movie production to one of his officers while arranging for a guy he once pursued as a dangerous criminal to be the actress’ bodyguard. Plus, even when he suspects the water commissioner of shenanigans Jesse doesn’t call in some accountants or utilities experts to perform an audit and investigation, he just kind of casually happens to talk to the people at the water company involved in the fraud. Hell, he doesn’t even check his own water bill to see if anything looks off.
Instead, most of his focus and action is directed towards dealing with the young lady who is a chronic texter while driving. Again, I know this is a serious problem, but even when Jesse manages to get some legal action taken against her he also continues to involve himself with the idea of turning the girl around for the better. Noble, but as I’ve outlined here, he’s really got better things to do. So no surprise that everything goes to hell on him.
This seems to be all part of a weird situation with this series at this time. After Robert B. Parker’s death his family chose Michael Brandman to continue it, and since Brandman had been the writer/producer of a series of pretty good TV movies based on these books that made a lot of sense. Yet in these first two books he did Jesse really comes across as a cop who abuses his power over trivial matters while ignoring major situations.
It’s not surprising to me then that Brandman only did one more of these before the series was handed over to Reed Farrel Coleman. The writing is decent enough and mimics the style of Parker, but the plotting choices make Jesse out to be pretty awful at his job....more
I received a free advance copy of this for review from NetGalley.
Wait a minute. This is the THIRTIETHPrey novel?!? That can’t be right because I remeI received a free advance copy of this for review from NetGalley.
Wait a minute. This is the THIRTIETHPrey novel?!? That can’t be right because I remember buying the first Prey book when I was about twenty so that would make me….
Damn.
I better get this review done before I drop dead of old age.
The teenage daughter of a US senator is running some internet photo searches to see if any pics from her Instagram account have been shared when she stumbles across a chilling discovery. Someone has posted secretly taken photos and of her and other children of prominent politicians on a web site featuring racist propaganda as well as providing personal details on the kids. While there are no overt threats the implications are clear, and the fear is that some nutjob with a rifle will take the hint.
Deputy US Marshal Lucas Davenport is brought in by some of his political pals to quickly and quietly try to pin down the source of the pictures. With few clues to go on Lucas has to start talking to members of organized alt-right groups, but since most them are armed and make no secret about their hatred of the government it’s hard to whittle down the list of suspects. As Davenport tries to figure out who was behind the whole thing, a quietly angry man inspired by the site starts to make plans including committing his first murders.
This one starts with an intriguing and timely premise, and for most of the book it's John Sandford delivering as usual so I had no complaints. However, some serious cracks show up in the third act that undermined the foundation of the book for me.
First off is the political angle. Sandford has long been carefully walking through the minefield of having his lead character linked to prominent politicians without Lucas being particularly political himself. That’s served the series well because it provides the story logic as to why this one cop/federal agent keeps being involved in all these high profile cases without Sandford alienating readers from one side or the other.
However, these days it’s getting increasingly hard to believe that Lucas can continue to dance between the raindrops while having powerful friends from both sides of the left/right divide. The idea that he doesn’t have any real political enemies coming after him while being able to solve the problems of other highly prominent people is getting increasingly hard to buy, especially because his cases usually make national news. Somebody would be trying to tar and feather him these days.
The other problem I had with this one is due to a shift in the ending. When the series started Lucas was more of a lone wolf who was more than willing to do some highly illegal stuff to get what he considered justice. That’s faded over time, and since he’s become a federal agent he’s much more of a team player so that we haven’t seen Davenport running a shady solo operation for a while now.
Without giving anything anyway… It seems like Sandford made a conscious decision to bring back some of the old Lucas for the climax of this one, and we once again see Davenport pulling sneaky and underhanded moves to get the outcome he wants. The difference this time is that in the previous books Lucas was always very careful about covering his tracks, and his manipulations were generally subtle. This time his scheme is glaringly obvious with none of the cleverness or caution that we’ve seen him use in the past in similar situations.
None of the shortcomings ruined the book for me. It’s still Sandford doing a Prey novel so it’s highly enjoyable to read, but tight plotting and thinking through ramifications of actions have long been a hallmark of this series so it’s jarring to feel like the ending of one was a little sloppy....more
I’m not saying that’s a good thing or a bad thing because I like podcasts. In fact, I’ve listened to severalThis isn’t really a book. It’s a podcast.
I’m not saying that’s a good thing or a bad thing because I like podcasts. In fact, I’ve listened to several hours of them about the Golden State Killer already. The difference is that those I downloaded for free while I used one of my monthly credits for this Audible Original so I’m feeling a little cheated. Plus, I already had read or heard about 99% of the information in here already so calling it 'the untold story' isn't exactly true either.
In fairness, it’s pretty well done as far as giving an account of GSK, and the story of how cold case detective Paul Holes helped identify him by using genealogical DNA information which ultimately led to the arrest of Joseph James DeAngelo is fascinating. I could have lived without the spooky musical cues which reminded me of a trashy tabloid TV show, but with multiple interviews of victims, cops, and others involved in the case it does make for a good summary of the whole complicated story. If you don’t know much about it, and you have a spare Audible credit then you could do a lot worse.
However, if you’ve really want to do deeper dive into this terrifying story then I’d highly recommend starting with the late Michelle McNamara’s brilliant book I'll Be Gone in the Dark. (One of the parts I very much liked was Paul Holes emotionally talking about McNamara as he tells the story of how she came to feel like his investigative partner before her untimely death.) The true crime podcast Casefile also did an in-depth multi-part account of the history of GSK before he was caught that is very informative about his crimes. The HLN podcast Unmasking A Killer came out shortly before GSK was arrested, and then it added several episodes about the arrest and what we learned about DeAngelo after that. A lot of the info I heard there first is repeated here.
So again, this isn’t bad, but if you’ve already spent time following this whole case you won’t find out anything you haven’t read or heard before....more
Even though I’m a huge fan of mystery/crime fiction I’ve long known that I never could have been a cop. One of the main reasons is that if I were faceEven though I’m a huge fan of mystery/crime fiction I’ve long known that I never could have been a cop. One of the main reasons is that if I were faced with a suspect I knew was lying to me that I lack the patience to work the truth out of them with long interrogations. Instead I’d immediately shine a bright light in their eyes and grab the nearest phone book. That was never clearer to me then while reading this book when I found myself gritting my teeth and wishing I could reach through the pages to choke the shit out of this lying asshole.
In the spring of 1975 two pre-teen sisters, Sheila and Kate Lyon, vanished from a suburban Maryland mall just outside of Washington D.C. Despite a huge police investigation and being covered all over local media the girls were never found.
Almost 40 years later a cold case detective was going through the file again and came across something new. Days after the girls disappeared, an 18 year old man named Lloyd Welch had given a statement to the police about seeing them talking with a man at the mall and leaving with him in a car. However, Welch’s statement seemed fishy, and he promptly flunked a lie detector test which led to him admitting that it was a combination of things he’d seen in the news and made up. The cops dismissed him as just another attention seeking kook that was wasting their time.
However, this detective noticed that Welch’s statement about the man he claimed to have seen had a detail that matched his prime suspect, a child molester who had died in prison. Believing Welch may know something after all the cops tracked him down only to find that he was serving a long prison term for molesting a young girl. It also turned out that one composite sketch from a witness in the mall at the time looked a lot like Welch at 18.
What began there was a series of long interviews with Welch who they quickly learned seem almost allegoric to telling the truth. When caught in a lie Welch would refuse to admit it, blaming any mistakes on faulty memory brought about by age and drug abuse, while eventually shifting to a completely different story that ignored what he previously said. Or he might backtrack and start repeating a story the police had already discredited. When faced with absolute proof of false statements and finally admitting something he’d say he lied because he was scared and trying to protecting himself.
Pinning Welch down to a story was like trying to nail Jell-O to the wall, and it took a team of detectives working variations on several different tactics for over a year to eventually tease something approaching the truth out of him. This would lead to new directions and other suspects involved in the crime which were mainly members of Welch’s family. They would turn out to be a clan of transplanted hillbillies that seem to be something out of a Rob Zombie movie with child abuse and sexual assault being common place.
Mark Bowen was a young journalist just starting his career when he reported on the missing Lyon sisters, and as he explains the case haunted him for years afterwards. He’s done some interesting things structurally with this because it doesn’t follow your typical true crime format. The story begins with Lloyd Welch and that’s where most of the focus is. There’s not a lot of time spent on the original abduction which is what you’d usually get in a true crime story. Then there’d be some background on the family, the investigation, and the break with Welch might come in at the halfway point. Bowen gives us that as background and essentially starts very early with the cops going to Welch.
That’s because this is mainly about the interviews and how the cops managed to tease and cajole information from Welch when he was feeding them mostly bullshit, and then how they kept him talking long past the point where he realizes that he should just shut up. That makes sense because this case hinges on how they eventually learned to read what Welch was telling them and how to work him. In the end the major break comes not from what Lloyd actually said, but instead from a detective following up on one his lies but realizing that the truth was actually in the other details Welch kept putting in his various stories.
This is an interesting way to do a book like this, and the case is fascinating. However, it can also be frustrating because a great deal of time is spent just reading Welch’s shifting lies and repeated justifications. It also doesn’t end as neatly as an episode of Law & Order. While some justice is done there is still a lot left unanswered and probably some guilty parties will never be charged.
It’s a solid piece of crime true crime writing, but reading about Welch wore me out. I don’t know how the cops who had to actually deal with him could stand it....more
*I'm floating this review because it publishes today.*
I received a free advance copy of this from NetGalley for review.
A spray-tanned sack of crap is *I'm floating this review because it publishes today.*
I received a free advance copy of this from NetGalley for review.
A spray-tanned sack of crap is about to win a major election because he’s very good at firing up rubes with promises of returning to a time that never really existed, and even when his shady connections and criminal history are exposed all he has to do is claim that it’s all lies by the media to get his loyal followers to ignore the stories.
You know, I usually read crime fiction to escape reality...
Quinn Colson has been the sheriff of Tibbehah County, Mississippi, for almost ten years now, but things aren’t getting any easier for him. The rise of a populist candidate for governor who wants to turn back the clock has excited a whole bunch of deplorable people who feel emboldened to act like an even bigger assholes than usual. The candidate also has ties to the Dixie Mafia, and that relationship has caused an internal power struggle in the organization which reaches all the way to the lady running the local strip club. Meanwhile, a couple of podcasters from New York have come to Tibbehah to dig into the mysterious death of a high school boy twenty years earlier. That has personal connections to Quinn because his late uncle, the sheriff at the time, declared the boy’s death a suicide to the satisfaction of no one, and Quinn’s new wife was dating the kid when he died.
This series started with a fairly simple hook of a war hero returning to his hometown and trying to stop the crime and corruption he finds there. However, that summary makes it sound like this is a bunch of books about a bad ass action hero going lone wolf and taking the law into his own hands, and that’s just not the case. While Quinn is definitely a guy who can take care of himself in a fight, the solution is never just a matter of shooting the bad guys. Quinn respects the law and due process even if the people in power around him often don’t, and so the books aren’t just the fantasy of a good guy with a gun being the answer to everyone’s problem.
Another thing is that even though the series revolves around Quinn this is not just his story. Over the course of nine books Ace Atkins has built up the population of Tibbehah County to the point where we’ve spent as much time with Quinn’s family, friends, and enemies as we do with him. By building up every aspect of his fictional county and all of its characters Atkins has made the story about much more than just one sheriff in a small rural community.
That really pays off in this one because Tibbehah is clearly supposed to be a microcosm of America, and it’s obvious who the crooked political candidate is standing in for. The book displays how the promise of preserving traditions and culture as well as returning to some imagined glory days is just racist code used by rich old white men to try and keep their power. It’s also easy to see that as a former journalist Atkins is angry how the media has been smeared to give the faithful an excuse to turn a blind eye to crimes and horrible behavior.
The podcast subplot provides another interesting angle on the media aspect. The two young ladies seem like responsible and decent people who genuinely want to expose the truth about a hidden crime. However, they’re also looking for a good story, and they're just a little too eager to jump on a juicy theory once it presents itself. Again, this seems to be a veteran journalist doing some commentary about how facts are important, but the context and agenda of who is presenting them also needs to be considered. That's a very valid point at a time when true crime stories are being picked over and analyzed by podcasts and internet sleuths.
This one also ends on a cliff-hanger and most definitely seems like part one of a larger story. There’s always been some on-going threads from book to book that have built up a larger story in this series, but generally we also get a self-contained storyline as well. This time not much is resolved, but I’ll be counting the days until we find out what happens next....more
I received a free advance copy of this from NetGalley for review.
If a dead body was found in a library I’d assume that he must have had some serious oI received a free advance copy of this from NetGalley for review.
If a dead body was found in a library I’d assume that he must have had some serious overdue fees. Those librarians don’t play around.
A professor who does high end medical research is found murdered in a college library so Minnesota state investigator Virgil Flower is assigned to help out when the local Minneapolis cops hit a dead end. As Virgil digs into the case his problem isn’t that there aren’t any clues, it’s that there are far too many. Sex, drugs, blackmail, lawsuits, ex-wives, an estranged daughter, and a bitter academic rivalry are all angles that come up. Sifting through the noise and finding the killer’s motive is the key to cracking the case, but the more Virgil digs into it, the less sense the entire thing makes.
This is a crackerjack of a whodunit. Sandford’s usual MO is to let the reader know the villain is from the jump, or at least give us their point of view. His books are generally a cat-and-mouse game between the cop and the bad guy so his stuff is often more thriller than traditional mystery although detective work always plays a major role. He has done a few where the reader is completely in the dark as to the killer and their motives, and this is one of his best pure head scratchers.
We’ve got an intriguing scenario with plenty of viable red herrings so that I was as stumped as Virgil for the entire time. When the killer’s identity is revealed it’s a very satisfying answer because Sandford plays fair, and the clues were all there the entire time.
There's also a good tense situation built up at the end that plays into Sandford’s strength of building momentum in action scenes that keep you on the edge of your seat. Virgil continues to be a strong lead character with his laid back persona making for a nice change of pace from your typical thriller heroes. There’s a little less humor in this one than the last couple of Flowers books, but still some good chuckles that make this a touch lighter than the Prey series.
Overall, it’s a very nice piece of crime writing with a solid mystery and a great ending....more
I received a free advance copy of this from NetGalley for review.
I know the dating scene can be tough, but if you’ve resorted to murder as part of youI received a free advance copy of this from NetGalley for review.
I know the dating scene can be tough, but if you’ve resorted to murder as part of your plan to hook up with your dream guy then maybe you should give Tinder another try.
Sam Carver is a LAPD homicide detective working the case of a prominent architect who got his throat cut. What Sam doesn’t know is that the killer is a beautiful woman who is infatuated with him after she read a story about him in the local paper. Dylan Cross has scores to settle and romance with Sam on her mind so she’s come up with a plan to get her revenge while stalking him.
This is kind of an odd one. I guess I’ll call it character based crime fiction because it mainly shifts first person perspective from Sam to Dylan, and through this we get their history and personalities. Sam was a bit of bohemian in his younger days, playing in rock bands and backpacking around Europe before he settled into the role of detective which is due in no small part to being haunted by the memory of his father’s murder which was never solved. Dylan was a college tennis star and rising architect in an industry dominated by men. Both have an appreciation for the finer things like classical music and art. Thanks to Dylan they’re now linked together by murder.
And that’s kind of it. There’s not really much else going on other than Dylan killing a few people, Sam going over the evidence, and then they both brood about things. There’s not much detecting going on and very little action, either. It’s also awfully one sided with Dylan knowing everything about Sam thanks to her magical hacking ability and his habit of writing down all his thoughts and feelings on his computer.
This could have worked as a thriller with some crazy stalker getting obsessed with a detective and carrying out murders to create a bizarre connection between them, but here that’s undercut because Dylan isn’t full-on crazy town banana pants. She actually has very good reason for being angry with her victims, and the plot is designed to create sympathy for her. However, her fantasies about Sam undercut it as a revenge story, too.
I also had a hard time with the lack of reality with Sam’s role as a cop in this. Even though he’s a homicide detective in a huge city he only has one case he’s working on, and Sam somehow has enough juice to refuse to work with a partner instead of being told to shut up and quit being such a diva. He tells his lieutenant that he’s going to fly to New York to interview the ex-wife of the victim, and for some reason his boss doesn't tell him to use the phone and spare the budget. There’s the trope of the lieutenant complaining about how the mayor is on his ass because of the prominent nature of the victim. It’s also never explained how Dylan knows that Sam will be the detective who works the murder in the first place, but I guess since he's apparently the only police detective in LA that it was a safe assumption.
Despite all of this, there were things in this book I liked. It’s got a nice tone to the melancholy observations about LA and modern life, and both Sam and Dylan are interesting as characters. I just wish they’d found a few more interesting things to do in a more realistic and less TV-movie-of-the-week kind of way....more
It’s another brutally hot summer day in Phoenix, and homicide detective Sean Richardson has to spend it fishing a headless and armless torso out of a It’s another brutally hot summer day in Phoenix, and homicide detective Sean Richardson has to spend it fishing a headless and armless torso out of a canal. The only good news is that it still has the feet including a toe ring, and this clue leads Sean and his partner to suspect that a missing housewife, Becky Miller, is probably the victim and her cheating husband looks awfully guilty.
In the interest of full disclosure I need to note that James Thane is a longtime friend of mine here on Goodreads so I’m not even gonna try to pretend that this is an objective review. Please take my word that if it stank I’d just quietly ignore it, but fortunately it’s pretty good so I can talk about it.
There’s two parallel stories at work in this. One is the first person narration from Richardson which mixes a straight-up realistic police procedural with some on-going developments in his personal life which has been built up over the last couple of books. The other third-person story focuses on Becky in the weeks leading up to the discovery of the body in the canal. Regular readers of crime fiction can probably guess where the story is going yet there’s a couple of good twists and turns in there, and the ending was a nice surprise.
Overall, it’s a solid piece of crime fiction that has a good page turning vibe to it, and while it’s obviously a little gory with the whole chopped up body in the canal thing it doesn’t wallow in that like some books would. It’s also got an interesting shifting tone to it. The police stuff is a straight line narrative that you might see on something like Law & Order, but the Becky plot dealing with the crime has a much messier and emotional feel to it. It’s an unusual way to play it, but I particularly enjoyed Becky’s story which had a lot of clever crime elements. There’s also some nice detail work done that makes the reader really feel the desert heat as the characters roam around the city....more
I received a free advance copy of this from NetGalley for review.
What happens in Vegas, stays in Vegas. And if what happens is that you get eaten by aI received a free advance copy of this from NetGalley for review.
What happens in Vegas, stays in Vegas. And if what happens is that you get eaten by a cannibal while there you'll definitely be staying in Vegas.
Clayton Deese was an enforcer/hired killer for a loan shark in New Orleans who gets arrested after one of his jobs go wrong. Since Deese has a lot of skeletons in his closet he jumps bail and disappears. Actually, the skeletons are in graves behind his house, and Deese had a habit of cutting prime cuts off his victims and throwing them on the grill. Once that grisly discovery has been made Deese is the country’s most notorious fugitive, and US Marshal Lucas Davenport is brought in to help track him down.
Deese has hooked up with his brother who is running a nasty home invasion crew that Lucas tracks from Los Angeles to Las Vegas as the trail keeps getting bloodier. There’s also a complication that Deese’s old boss is worried that he’ll flip on him if caught so he’s trying to either kill him or make sure he gets out of the country.
This is the 29th book of the Prey series, and it’s got all the usual stuff. The plotting is tight with multiple characters all working their own agendas, the tension builds nicely to some big moments, and we get to hang out with Davenport as he uses a mix of deduction, manipulation, and intimidation to find the bad guys. Sandford even throws a pretty wicked curve ball at the reader about a quarter of the way into the book that literally made me sit up and curse aloud in shock when it happened. Lucas’ new role as a marshal continues to be interesting, and the Vegas setting is used well as the kind of place where trying to follow a suspect through the maze of a casino is a challenge.
However, it doesn’t quite hit the peaks of the series at its best. There’s some great set-up of Deese as a people-eatin’ leg-breaker, but more time is actually spent with other members of the home invasion crew so that he doesn’t come across as the best of the Prey bad guys. It’s a little disappointing that more isn’t done with the cannibal angle. (What? If I read a book where I’m told the villain eats people then I expect somebody to get eaten. Don’t look at me like that. I’m not the only person who watched Hannibal.) In fact, it’s more used for shock factor and almost a running gag than anything. The twist that we get early on doesn’t really amount to much either at the end of the day and is kind of quickly forgotten.
Still, it’s John Sandford so it’s a pretty satisfying thriller that will keep you turning pages even if it isn’t Lucas’s most memorable case....more
I received a free copy of this from NetGalley for review.
This book asks the ultimate question: How long can a man live eating only frozen chicken pot I received a free copy of this from NetGalley for review.
This book asks the ultimate question: How long can a man live eating only frozen chicken pot pies?
Wheatfield, Minnesota, is a dying small town until several apparitions of the Virgin Mary in an old church are captured on video by multiple people and posted on social media. Now Wheatfield is booming thanks to an influx of visitors hoping to see the vision for themselves. However, when a sniper wounds two people outside the church at different times it puts the brakes on the new tourism trade. State investigator Virgil Flowers arrives and tries to figure out why someone would be randomly shooting folks who are just hoping to catch a glimpse of Mary. Virgil begins pulling on multiple threads involving various townsfolk, and things quickly escalate.
Can Virgil track down the sniper before he finds himself in the crosshairs? Or will he starve to death first since he can’t get a decent meal anywhere in town and has to subsist on chicken pot pies from the convenience store?
This is a pretty typical Virgil Flowers novel, and as a John Sandford fan that’s good enough for me. Once again we’ve got Virgil going to a small town to solve a mystery, and he relies on tapping into local gossip more than forensics or Sherlock Holmes style deduction to do it. There’s a lot of fun characters, and we get a welcome dose of Sandford regulars Shrake and Jenkins. Virgil also continues to see his personal life change and grow with a big event on the horizon.
The difference in this one is that it’s much more of a whodunit than most of Sandford’s other thrillers. Usually we get a lot from the villain’s perspective even if Sandford masks their identity in the writing, and the mystery usually comes from withholding a critical piece that turns out to be the way that Virgil or Lucas Davenport find the bad guy when they figure that out. This time we are completely in the dark as to who is doing the shooting and why until near the end except for one brief chapter in the middle which gives nothing away. When the answers come it’s the kind of logical and satisfying solution that I’d expect from the tight plotting that Sandford does.
The only really negative thing I can say about this is that it may have ruined pot pies for me. At least for a little while......more
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