Review by New York Times Review
Michael Robotham is one adult author you can really trust around young girls. In SAY YOU'RE SORRY (Mulholland/Little, Brown, $24.99), this Australian crime novelist assigns half the narration to Piper Hadley, who tells her story with the urgency of a latter-day Scheherazade. As we learn from her candid diary entries, Piper was abducted along with her best friend, Natasha McBain, when both were 15, and for the past three years, they've been held captive in a cellar by their kidnapper, a sexual predator they call George. Piper tries not to think too hard about the periodic visits her friend must make to George's quarters, but after Tash comes back bloodied from their latest encounter, she finds a way to escape from the cellar, promising to return with help to rescue Piper. Robotham projects an uncanny approximation of Piper's girlish voice as she shrewdly analyzes the initial reaction to their disappearance, gleaned from the newspaper and television reports shared by their captor. ("People put a shine on us that wasn't there for real, making us into the angels they wanted us to be.") And she philosophically accepts the fickle nature of their fame. ("Rumors began circulating. . . . We were promiscuous. Feral. Delinquent.") But when Tash fails to return and it's Piper's turn to go upstairs with George, her narrative takes on a tone of desperation. Joe O'Loughlin, a clinical psychologist and criminal profiler who often plays the hero in Robotham's psychological suspense thrillers, uses his share of the narrative to let us know what's happening above ground. A husband and wife are brutally murdered in their home during a whiteout blizzard. The barefoot body of a woman is found under the ice of a frozen lake. And O'Loughlin, whose stormy relationship with his own headstrong daughter is a continuing source of grief, finds himself thinking more and more about the lost girls. Robotham is a writer of many voices, sounding exactly like a spoiled teenage girl one minute and, in the next breath, exactly like a frustrated parent. And while he seems to have a lot of sympathy for the families of missing children, the dynamic that truly engages him is the one between fathers and daughters. In this story there are good fathers, bad fathers, even monstrous fathers. The daughters are no saints either. But, for all that, they can't help loving one another. "There really isn't anything gory or gruesome I've not seen or can't somehow handle," Kay Scarpetta lets it be known at the outset of THE BONE BED (Putnam, $28.95), Patricia Cornwell's 20th novel featuring her superstar forensic pathologist, who is currently serving as the chief medical examiner for the Commonwealth of Massachusetts. Proving her point, the unflappable Scarpetta takes a dramatic plunge into Boston Harbor to retrieve the bound body of a woman ensnared in the same fishing line entangling a 2,500-pound leatherback turtle ("the earth's last living dinosaur") that may be 100 years old. The media glare surrounding the giant turtle also leads to an identification of the murdered woman in the harbor, but not before calling attention to two other missing women, one the wife of a billionaire industrialist on trial for her murder, the other an American paleontologist on a dinosaur dig in Canada. For once, Cornwell resists the impulse to fly her brainy sleuth out on blackops missions for the government agencies that have her on speed dial. The tight plot keeps a local focus, the disconnected deaths are neatly tied together, Scarpetta's annoying friends mainly stay out of her way, and there are plenty of stomach-churning autopsies performed with cutting-edge equipment, including one on a mummified corpse. If you're reading for credibility. Archer Mayor's police procedurals can be highly instructive about crime trends in provincial New England. PARADISE CITY (Minotaur, $25.99) suggests that its small-town crooks have graduated from marijuana nurseries and meth labs to more sophisticated criminal enterprises. Joe Gunther, the raw-boned Vermont detective in these rugged novels, finds the common element in a number of recent burglaries: all the jewelry and objets d'art seem to be finding their way to Northampton, Mass., an old manufacturing town that's been retooled as an upscale art center. As regional operations go, this crime ring (which even has a Web site, LotsforLoot.com) is way more ingenious than the usual dopesmuggling gang. The Danish authors Lene Kaaberbol and Agnete Friis have written another disturbing exposé of social injustice in INVISIBLE MURDER (Soho Crime, $25), which makes the criminal mistreatment of Denmark's disenfranchised Roma population more visible than the authorities might wish. As a favor for a social-worker friend, a Red Cross nurse named Nina Borg travels to a suburb of Copenhagen, where she discovers about 50 Roma living without facilities in an old machine shop. Meanwhile, in Budapest, a promising law student is tossed out of school when it's revealed that he's part Roma. But the awkwardness of the authors' storytelling in this translation by Tara Chace might just cause readers to bail out before all the instances of racism are drawn together. Too many characters and subplots are introduced too quickly, yet it takes forever to turn the story over to Nina, a compassionate heroine who deserves a better chance to shine her light on the terrible things she sees. Two teenage girls have been held captive in a cellar. One has escaped. The other remains to tell us their story.
Copyright (c) The New York Times Company [November 11, 2012]
Review by Booklist Review
Similar robberies, focused on antiques and jewelry, occur in both Vermont and Boston, and the Boston case becomes a homicide. Joe Gunther and his Vermont Bureau of Investigation team learn that a big-time fence for such items is operating in the charming, wealthy, slightly flaky college town of Northampton, Massachusetts. VBI, Boston PD, and Northampton PD join forces to bring down the fence, but they get more than they bargained for. The twenty-third book in this fine series offers all the elements that have captivated readers for more than two decades: solid police-procedural detail, a vivid sense of place, and wonderfully human interactions between Joe and the team he has nurtured from young beat cops to skilled investigators. In Paradise City, the focus is on Joe and the ever-irascible Willy Kunkel. Joe is still mourning the death of his lover, Lyn Silva; Willy's inner demons are damaging his relationship with fellow investigator Sammy Martens, the mother of his adored daughter. Mayor leaves things only partially resolved but resolved enough to expect that Joe, Willy, and Sammy will abide. Devoted fans, who no doubt abide their own losses, disappointments, and demons, will be heartened.--Gaughan, Thomas Copyright 2010 Booklist
From Booklist, Copyright (c) American Library Association. Used with permission.
Review by Publisher's Weekly Review
Mayor's solid 23rd Joe Gunther novel (after 2011's Tag Man) focuses on a tri-cornered interstate case involving multiple thefts. One night on Boston's exclusive Beacon Hill, three burglars break into the house of 89-year-old Wilhelmina "Billie" Hawthorn, who makes the fatal mistake of catching them in the act. Det. Jimmy McAuliffe gets the case and the unwelcome help of Billie's 26-year-old granddaughter, Mina Carson. In Tucker Peak, Vt., a wealthy ski resort, burglary and arson get the attention of Vermont Bureau of Investigation chief Gunther and his crew. Clues in both investigations point to a buyer of stolen goods in Northampton, Mass., completing the jurisdictional triangle. Another thread follows illegal immigrant Li Anming, a skilled jewel smith who becomes a virtual slave in an unusual sweatshop. Stings, surveillance, and interrogations all play a part in the effort to uncover a sophisticated, ruthless criminal operation. Fans of this first-rate procedural series will be satisfied. Agent: Molly Friedrich. (Oct.) (c) Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved.
(c) Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved
Review by Library Journal Review
Vermont detective Joe Gunther crosses state lines when a string of robberies he's investigating ties in with a nasty murder in Boston. Once again, the long-running and best-selling police procedural series surprises and thrills (after last year's Tag Man). [See Prepub Alert, 7/2/12.] (c) Copyright 2012. Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.
(c) Copyright Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.
Review by Kirkus Book Review
Joe Gunther and his crack team of Vermont sleuths crack a case in Massachusetts. One ill-fated night, sweet, elderly Billie Hawthorn inadvertently interrupts a robbery in her Beacon Hill house and pays dearly for it. Violence aside, the Boston police wonder why the thief passed over some highly valuable targets of opportunity--laptops, flat screens, stereo equipment--to purloin the silverware instead. Meanwhile, Lt. Joe Gunther and his Vermont Bureau of Investigation team have been puzzling over a series of similarly offbeat break-ins. Suddenly, all crooked roads seem to be leading to Northampton, where a new superfence--mysterious, shrewd and deadly--has become a player. Invited to join a task force, Gunther takes his best cop with him: that astringent observer of the human condition, irascible Willy Kunkle, whose grasp of social skills continues to be marginal, mostly because he wants it that way. Specifically uninvited to join is Mina Carson, Billie's niece. Bereft, enraged by the gratuitous violence inflicted on her aunt and hungry for revenge, she crashes the party anyway, becoming for Gunther an entirely unexpected complication. Understated, occasionally very funny (see Kunkle) and very intelligent. In his 23rd appearance (Tag Man, 2011, etc.), the Sage of Brattleboro remains as appealing as ever.]] Copyright Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.
Copyright (c) Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.
