Rex’s reviews of anything (but mostly books)

The lovely old facades of nineteenth-century buildings in the French Quarter of New Orleans can hide termite damage so severe that it’s a wonder the structures are still standing. Let that be a lesson to you; beauty has never been and never will be a repellent for evil. Old New Orleans hands themselves, Dave Robicheaux and Clete Purcell are fully aware of this sad truth, but even so the long-time friends seem surprised to discover malevolence and hatred amid the wilderness of Montana. If it wants you, Evil will always find you; even when you’re on vacation.

Evil in this case appears to swirl about the fabulously wealthy Wellstone family, soi-disant gentleman ranchers, former Texas oilmen whose holdings include a Montana compound complete with scar-faced ex-mob “security” and the conviction that their wealth imparts the divine right to rule those less fortunate. Evil, it would seem, is also rooted in a cynical application of religion to further sociopolitical beliefs; an evil that manifests itself in brutal murder set against the backdrop of clear waters, pine-scented forests, and a sky too big for some to comprehend. Purcell and Robicheaux, long magnets for this sort of evil, once more find themselves squarely in the middle.

The valley of the Swan River has become an unwilling nexus of sorts. There, an escaped convict seeks the woman and child who own his heart; a retired prison guard with a score to settle hot on his trail. One woman seeks respite from the prison she has constructed for herself; another follows an elusive glimmer of hope. The sins that Purcell and Robicheaux catalog in a few brief days reach from venial covetousness to adultery to molestation to murder; a veritable catalog of evil that seems out of place in a country where the biggest decision should be whether to fry up the trout one has just caught or to release him and cast for a larger meal. Let none say that the “Bobbsey Twins from Homicide,” as Purcell likes to call the two friends, do not carry a whole trainload of baggage wherever they go. Read the rest of this entry »

OK, all you Joanna Brady fans out there, the word for the day is “relationship.” Whether we’re talking your relationship with your mother, your spouse, your siblings, or anyone else; J. A. Jance’s Damage Control is all about damage to those relationships, the damage those relationships can cause, and how to control it all. Here: have a look-see:

Sheriff Joanna Brady’s Cochise County squad is stretched thin during a baking Arizona summer by not one, not two, not three, but four unexpected deaths. On the surface, three seem to be suicides, but that fourth one? Not likely: most suicides don’t wrap their bodies in trash bags before burying themselves… On top of a real, for-sure murder victim (one discovered by a fourteen-year-old kid to boot), Brady’s deputies must also investigate a fatal fire that might have been a suicide; and the double suicide (complete with farewell note) of an elderly couple who drove their car off a cliff at their favorite mountain overlook. It’s this last that’s causing Brady the most pain. It’s not the investigation, which seems fairly cut-and-dried, but the couple’s estranged – and I mean really estranged – sixty-something daughters. When the two are tossed in her jail after a double D&D at a local watering hole, Brady decides to work a little tough love on the women. Seems she’s learned something after all from growing up with a difficult woman in her own life – her mother.

When the trash-bag body turns out to be that of a local woman with Down Syndrome who’s been missing from a Tucson group home for several months, Brady quickly turns up critical information: it’s a clue overlooked by the short-timer detective who’d shelved a “NHI” case he’d received days before retirement. Her joint op with the Tucson PD, however, stalls out in front of a stone wall of “patient confidentiality” at the charitable foundation running that group home. Meanwhile, the double suicide has started looking a bit unlikely; piquing the young sheriff’s curiosity and placing even more of a burden on her department.

On the home front, Brady’s ever-difficult relationship with her mother is locked and loaded (as usual); her husband’s writing career is about to mess up her fall calendar; and ghosts from the past, real and suspected, are playing games with the young sheriff’s head. Think she’s busy now? She ain’t seen nothin’ yet. Not to worry, though – Joanna Brady is one smart and resourceful woman… Read the rest of this entry »

Three years ago Lionel “Lonnie” Byrd had dodged a bullet. Charged in the murder of a young prostitute, Byrd had been released from custody thanks to legwork by The World’s Greatest Detective, Elvis Cole. Just a couple of nights ago, though, a self-administered bullet had proved un-dodgeable. And on the table between Byrd’s rigid hands, spread out before his sightless eyes, lay the evidence that Cole must’ve been wrong. A scrapbook filled with grisly Polaroids clearly placed the dead man at the scene of Yvonne Burdett’s murder… and six other murders, too. It sure looked as if Cole’s detective work had set a serial killer free to continue practicing his nasty hobby, a little fact the LAPD detectives on the Byrd task force seem disinclined to let him forget. Ever.

If you’re The World’s Greatest Detective (WGD), though, you’re probably unaccustomed to second-guessing yourself. Naturally, Cole opens his own investigation; and, naturally, it soon becomes clear that there is something decidedly rotten in the state of Denmark. A few of the details of Byrd’s alleged suicide don’t quite add up; and certain cops on the case seem to have done some remarkably sloppy detective work. Then, too, the task force’s rush to judgment seems even more rushed than would be usual for a media-frenzied case. What – or, perhaps more to the point, who – is a deputy chief who’s personally running the investigation’s task force hiding? It definitely looks as if Cole, the ultimate outsider, has his work cut out for him this time. Read the rest of this entry »

Freya Nakamichi 47 is about as close to perfect as a woman can get, at least in certain, more hedonistic circles: she’s beautiful, willing, uninhibited, and readily available. Of course, Freya isn’t actually a human woman, she’s a robot concubine designed and programmed to become whatever the man she’s with desires (as long as it’s a beautiful woman who’s liquid dynamite in the sack). Heck, Freya’s even been programmed to fall in lust with whatever man she meets. Or woman, for that matter – she’s been… ummm… biprogrammed…

But Freya has one big problem: there hasn’t been a living human, male or female, around since before she was made a couple of centuries ago; which leaves Freya and her sibs (a vast harem of 200-year-old sexbots essentially identical to the pneumatic Freya) about as obsolete as you can get. That’s not to mention that Freya is getting pretty bored after a few decades with nothing but robots to scratch her intrinsic itches. But that’s a perfect setting for an adventure, right?

And, boy! is Freya about to have herself an adventure! It’s an adventure that spans the solar system, finds the luscious femmebot stalked by what seems like a million nearly identical dwarf assassins, and just might mean the resurrection of human life. But the forces arrayed to stop Freya from stopping – or is it allowing – the crucial events to happen are shadowy, powerful, and – above all – confusing. For a none-too-bright blonde (at least some times she’d blonde), Freya has her work cut out for her… Read the rest of this entry »