Review by New York Times Review
Uncle Heath is raring to take back his marijuana operation from his nephews, Tyler and Cody, who live for high-speed dirt car racing. ("That was it. That was their life") But the old man happens to return home while the boys are out of town, racing in the 19th Annual Possum Trot Special. Thinking he's caught a thief on the deserted family farm, Heath shoots Ordeen Davis, who does odd jobs for Miss Fannie, and tosses his body into the Big Black River. Young Ordeen "was a good boy," Fannie says with feeling. "Good to his momma." So much for Quinn's trouble-free wedding. Atkins, who has even bigger fish to fry, takes on a crooked trucking outfit based in Tupelo that cons drivers into hauling stolen goods. When a big (6foot-6, 260 pounds) trucker named Boom, who left an arm in Iraq, realizes he's been transporting something other than avocados, he gets in touch with his old Army buddy, Quinn. Boom may not take to smuggling, but he loves trucking, especially on routes that traverse Louisiana, a land of lush landscapes and exotic place names like Turtle Bayou, Lake Charles, Breaux Bridge, the Atchafalaya River. If you're a romantic like Boom, just reading these luscious names can make you smell the wisteria, feel the breeze and melt into the scenery. POSSIBLE SPOILER ALERT: Linwood Barclay is not known for injecting paranormal elements into his domestic mysteries. That makes A NOISE DOWNSTAIRS (Morrow/HarperCollins, $26.99) something of an artfully crafted anomaly. Or does it? Paul Davis, a nerdy professor at West Haven College in Connecticut, has the bad luck to come across Kenneth Hoffman, a fellow faculty member, trying to dispose of the bodies of two women. Some months later, Hoffman is in prison and Davis is having nightmares and headaches from his close encounter with a murderer. His wife, Charlotte, tries to curb his morbid fancies by bringing home an antique typewriter that proves to be an amusing distraction. Until the machine starts typing notes from the two murdered women. Before he sends Davis around the bend, Barclay places his protagonist in the kind of normal suburban situations we expect from this author - playing squash with a friend, getting breakfast for his son, consulting a shrink. Don't turn your back on any of these guys. HERE'S A TIP: Do not trust the narrator! Worth keeping in mind at all times, this friendly warning is especially applicable when reading the last thing i told you (Morrow/HarperCollins, paper, $15.99), another shape-shifting psychological mystery by Emily Arsenault, a writer who constantly surprises me. Here she fiddles around with the very concept of the narrative voice by splitting the story between two storytellers. Sgt. Henry Peacher speaks from his official perspective as the homicide detective investigating the murder of Dr. Mark Fabian, a psychotherapist whose head was bashed in by someone wielding a heavy bookend. The other, more intimate voice belongs to Nadine Raines, who became a patient of Dr. Fabian's because of "what I did to my social studies teacher." Although we eventually learn what she did to her teacher, we never tire of Nadine's voice, which seems to hover on the near side of madness: "There was something freeing, something rapturous, even, about that moment when my hand came down and broke through his skin." Then again, it's kind of comforting to hear Peacher discussing "Hansel and Gretel" with one of his little girls. COULD OUR PRAYERS be answered? Could Ray Devlin, the tough-guy hero of Wallace Stroby's SOME DIE NAMELESS (Mulholland, $26), be the reincarnation of John D. MacDonald's sorely missed Travis McGee? Sadly, no. Like McGee, Devlin is a beach bum who lives on a vintage wooden boat (the Higher Tide), in "a floating trailer park" in Florida. On occasion, he'll also do special favors for a friend or a client. But unlike McGee, an Army veteran, Stroby's hard-bitten hero was once a soldier of fortune with a more flexible code of ethics. In this redemption tale, Devlin improbably teams up with a female reporter on a floundering newspaper to investigate the real story behind a foreign political coup. The fierce competition for lucrative United States government defense contracts isn't as sexy a plot element as the military coups Devlin once found himself caught up in. But it lends a touch of realism to an otherwise fantastical Big Boys Adventure Story. Marilyn STASIO has covered crime fiction for the Book Review since 1988. Her column appears twice a month.
Copyright (c) The New York Times Company [August 2, 2018]
Review by Booklist Review
*Starred Review* Ray Devlin lives off the grid in Florida, having cut ties with nearly everyone he once knew in the seamy world of private security. So, when Aaron Bell shows up, Devlin is wary and his wariness is justified when Bell attempts to kill him. Devlin survives, but Bell doesn't, and Devlin is off to find out who wants him dead. In Philadelphia, newspaper reporter Tracy Quinn's police scanner alerts her to a corpse, a decomp just discovered by police. Tracy is smart and driven, and the PD's detectives trust her. But her newspaper is failing. No one knows when the pink slips might be coming. Devlin arrives in Philly to talk with saloon-owner Roark, the only person from his old life whom he trusts. But soon after they talk, Roark and all his customers are murdered. Tracy's decomp has proven to be a South American man living under an assumed name, and soon Tracy and Devlin are both targets and have become uneasy allies. Stroby (The Devil's Share, 2015), who is frequently compared to Elmore Leonard, remains at the top of his game. His sketches of today's newspapers and their financial woes are vividly rendered, as is his take on the sordid business of companies attempting to exploit the idea of Democracy for Profit. Best of all, Stroby's prose is as lean, clean, and mean as ever.--Gaughan, Thomas Copyright 2018 Booklist
From Booklist, Copyright (c) American Library Association. Used with permission.
Review by Publisher's Weekly Review
An overly familiar setup-an elite ex-military man attempting to leave his past behind him becomes entangled with a criminal element-mars this predictable thriller from Stroby (The Devil's Share and three other Crissa Stone novels). After a stint as an Army paratrooper, Ray Devlin was part of a mercenary team that worked as security contractors in political hot spots all around the world. Now 54 years old, divorced, and living in a boat off the coast of South Florida, he is almost killed by a former team member he hasn't seen in almost two decades. Attempting to stay alive long enough to find out who is behind the assassination attempt, Devlin follows clues to Philadelphia, where his path intertwines with that of an investigative reporter struggling to keep her job by breaking a story about multiple murders and grand-scale political corruption. Devlin's two-dimensional character is interchangeable with countless similar thriller protagonists, and the story's climax, while satisfying, is unsurprising. Fans will hope for a return to form next time. Agent: Robin Rue, Writers House. (July) © Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved.
(c) Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved
