The second girl

David Swinson

Book - 2016

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MYSTERY/Swinson David
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Subjects
Published
New York : Mullholland Books, Little, Brown and Company 2016.
Language
English
Main Author
David Swinson (author)
Edition
First edition
Physical Description
354 pages ; 25 cm
ISBN
9780316264174
Contents unavailable.
Review by New York Times Review

HOW DO YOU soften up a tough-guy hero anyway? The conventional approach is to make him a widowed or divorced dad who pines for his little girl. That, or give him some icky disease. With these and other clichés so close to hand, it's actually refreshing to pick up THE SECOND GIRL (Mulholland/Little, Brown, $26), a sweaty crime novel by the veteran police detective David Swinson, and come across a protagonist with a cocaine addiction. Frank Marr's drug habit goes to explain why, other than the obligatory "attitude problem," he was forced into early retirement from the Washington, D.C., police department and now works as a private investigator for a lawyer he's sweet on. It also explains why Marr is staking out a drug house in a nasty part of town - not to put the dealers out of business, but to steal their product. Imagine his surprise when he finally makes his move and discovers Amanda, a bruised and brainwashed 16-year-old from Virginia chained up in the bathroom. Like other impressionable teenagers seduced by flashy dealers, Amanda was being groomed for work in a brothel, and when word goes out about her rescue, Marr finds his services in demand by parents of other missing girls. Aside from his drug dependency, Marr's real secret is that he's a big old softy. Although brutal, even murderous, when dealing with pimps and drug dealers, on some sad cases, this decent, complicated man feels bad taking a client's money. Despite a pledge to steer clear of cases involving children, which often end badly, he agrees to look for another runaway. But this girl, Miriam Gregory, has taken to her new life and fights like a pro from being rescued. "After this job, I'm done with teenagers," Marr swears, especially "suburban white girls on crack." If there's any comfort in managing a drug habit, being outwitted by teenage girls and trying not to kill people, it's knowing that, to old friends on the force, "you'll always be one of us." WE'RE OFF TO the rugged northern coast of Maine in boar island (Minotaur, $26.99), by Nevada Barr, who sets all her mysteries amid the natural grandeur of our national parks. Anna Pigeon, the weathered law-enforcement park ranger who gives this long-running series its sturdy backbone, has been recalled from Rocky Mountain National Park in Colorado and temporarily assigned to the assorted land areas that make up Acadia. This places her in the middle of the raging "lobster wars," a territorial dispute among Maine fishermen angling for survival in their dwindling industry. As usual in this series, the most vivid scenes occur outdoors. An eerie underwater sequence captures the weighted silence in which a solitary lobster poacher goes night diving. A search by water for a girl and her dog, lost on a fogbound coast, casts another beautiful setting in a dangerous light. But this time out, the bond between Anna and nature seems to have frayed, strained by the author's attempt to draw too many other characters into this private world. Although Barr effectively delves into virgin territory by exploring the mind of a murderer, the gaggle of Colorado friends who followed Anna east are too much baggage for someone who works best when she works alone. LOST AND GONE FOREVER (Putnam, $27) is a hoot. The latest entry in Alex Grecian's lurid series of Victorian melodramas expands on the author's obsessive interest in Jack the Ripper with another potboiler in which Saucy Jack is alive and well and still tormenting Inspector Walter Day of Scotland Yard's elite new Murder Squad. The language is ripe, if not entirely in period, and the plot, which turns on the fate of the missing Day, is a hot mess. But Grecian introduces a fantastically devilish pair of bounty hunters who call themselves Mr. and Mrs. Parker ("As long as he remained alert, Mrs. Parker posed no danger to him," according to the besotted Mr. Parker) and creates some extravagantly overwritten scenes in which a majestic emporium called Plumm's is ceremoniously erected and oh-so-carelessly destroyed. Although Jack appears to have dispatched the Parkers at the end, the resurrection of those Grand Guignol figures shouldn't be a problem for an inspired fabulist like Grecian. IN SEVEN DAYS DEAD (Minotaur/Thomas Dunne, $25.99), another atmospheric mystery by the Canadian author John Farrow, the wild and windswept island of Grand Manan proves an invigorating holiday spot - provided visitors survive the treacherous crossing over the Bay of Fundy. Inspector Émile Cinq-Mars, a retired detective from the Service de Police de la Ville de Montréal, happens to be here on vacation on the stormy night that Alfred Orrock dies. "Boss and owner of everything" on the island, according to those who loathed the man, this tinpot despot didn't deserve his peaceful death, any more than he deserved the loyalty of his daughter, Madeleine, or the islanders who depended on him for survival. Farrow is an authoritative writer who creates characters with depth and plots that say something about them. (Even a minor character like a burnt-out officer with the Royal Canadian Mounted Police makes a strong impression on his "do-or-die posting.") But the author's true forte is setting, especially rock-cliff islands lashed by storms, buffeted by winds and clinging to generational secrets that poison the lives of people who keep reminding one another to "keep your knives sharp."

Copyright (c) The New York Times Company [June 12, 2016]
Review by Booklist Review

*Starred Review* Retired Washington, D.C., narcotics detective (and coke addict) Frank Marr is robbing a stash house when he finds a kidnapped girl held captive in the bathroom. He can't take her to the police without explaining why he was in the house, so he takes her to defense attorney Leslie Costello's office and hightails it back to the house to finish cleaning out the crew's drugs. As Frank dodges the detectives investigating Amanda Meyer's kidnapping, Costello makes it clear that the only way Frank can atone for landing her in the middle of the investigation is to agree to look for another girl who has gone missing from Amanda's neighborhood. So Frank is forced into his personal nightmare of a juggling act, using his narcotics-squad sting tactics to find an informant who can lead him to the pimps orchestrating the kidnappings, all the while keeping his addiction hidden from his police contacts. Frank Marr turns the PI mold on its head; he's an addict with a self-serving vigilante streak. But he's also a pretty decent guy deep down who works the streets with expertise, and readers will be fascinated by the day-in-the-life perspective of an unrepentant cocaine addict. A gritty knockout debut that screams for a series.--Tran, Christine Copyright 2016 Booklist

From Booklist, Copyright (c) American Library Association. Used with permission.
Review by Publisher's Weekly Review

PI Frank Marr, the narrator of this highly original noir from Swinson (A Detailed Man), has a big problem: he's a cocaine addict. When the former Washington, D.C., police detective breaks into a house in search of a stash he hopes to score, he finds Amanda Meyer, who can't be more than 15, chained to the floor in the bathroom. Instead of calling 911 or taking Amanda to the hospital, per standard police procedure, he delivers the girl to his sometime employer and lover, attorney Leslie Costello, who ensures that the teenager is reunited with her parents. Frank becomes a hero, and Leslie refers him to another set of parents seeking help in locating their missing daughter, 16-year-old Miriam Gregory. As he searches for Miriam, Frank must spin an ever-murkier web of lies to conceal his activities from his friends and the authorities. Frank constantly makes bad choices, and Swinson keeps the outcome in doubt to the end. He also does a fine job portraying the varied neighborhoods of contemporary Washington. Agent: Jane Gelfman, Gelfman Schneider/ICM. (June) © Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved.

(c) Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved
Review by Library Journal Review

Longtime addict Frank Marr was a decorated police detective in Washington, DC. Now two years after his retirement, he works sporadically as a private investigator to support his drug habit. Leslie, a defense attorney and Marr's occasional bedfellow, keeps him on retainer to investigate cases for her clients. But one day when Marr's stash of drugs runs low, he discovers a teenage girl in a closet while canvasing a local gang's safe house for illicit drugs. Upon delivering the abducted girl to Leslie, Marr is hired by a family from the suburbs of Virginia to investigate the disappearance of another girl-who has a connection to the first girl. -VERDICT Swinson (A Detailed Man) delivers an excellent -addition to the noir genre as he unveils layer after layer of his gritty protagonist. -Readers of Dennis Lehane and Richard Price as well as fans of The Wire will appreciate the bleak description of inner-city Washington, DC.-Russell Michalak, Goldey-Beacom Coll. Lib., Wilmington, DE © Copyright 2016. 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

Old habits die hard, and sometimes cause collateral damage, in this character-driven crime story. Retired D.C. cop Frank Marr works as a private investigator. He's a pro at the job but uses it as a means to fuel his drug addiction. While looting a house of its stashhe had it under surveillance for just this reasonhe finds a kidnapped girl, and doing the right thing threatens to unravel the life he's built. Author Swinson, himself a former D.C. police detective, brings the neighborhood and its criminal underworld to gritty life and gives the drug trade's handoffs and turf disputes an insider's intimate view. Marr is a compelling mess, saving the day not once but twice while constantly checking his nostrils for powder residue or the odd trickle of blood. When it suits his purpose (or covers his hobby) he'll take a life, but the lines he will or will not cross seem to be in constant motion, and that unpredictability keeps the tension high. Threats from some who know Marr's "early retirement" was a de facto firing don't cow him so much as push him to rebel. If the bad guys kill first and worry about the details later, doesn't justice require someone equally unconstrained to take them on? Marr may be a disaster on legs, but he gets inside a reader's head with ease; when he leaves someone to die then doubles back with second thoughts, it's shocking to note how infectious his perspective is. The ethical questions about his lifestyle aren't settled here, so it's good news that this is merely an introduction to a character who plans to return. An auspicious, and gleefully amoral, series debut. Copyright Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.

Copyright (c) Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.