From a mine deep below Angola’s surface to a penthouse high above Back Bay in Boston, a pair of “financial detectives” investigates a corporate shark engaged in rare Earth minerals—and maybe murder—in this geopolitical thriller.
At the start of Masters’ second Boozy McBain and Boston O’Daniel novel, geologist Daniel Neto sneaks mineral samples out of a pitch-black African tunnel leading from a restricted zone 800 feet below. Leaving the area, he encounters a guard who says he’s been given “the green light to handle things my own way”—and his way relies on a machete and a crocodile. Meanwhile, in Beantown, engineer and geologist Harold Rogers is about to sell his company, HR Tech, to another mining outfit known as Africa’s Future Resources. HR Tech recently developed proprietary technology to extract and process minerals, which skyrocketed the company’s stock. Rogers, who describes gorgeous redhead O’Daniel and McBain as “a swimsuit model and an alcoholic,” hires the designer-dressed sleuths to perform due diligence analysis prior to the sale. As the two investigate, they steer through corporate and government agency regulations and roadblocks, and they come up against Rodney Henry, AFR’s major shareholder. He’s a middle-aged, tough player in the international mining fraternity. While McBain flies to Africa to check out the AFR mines where Neto was gathering samples, O’Daniel stays local to cover Henry—figuratively as well as literally in his penthouse bedroom. And although McBain promises O’Daniel that when he goes to Africa, he won’t take up with a former lover living there, he does connect with his blond ex, and the “air conditioning could barely keep up with the two of them.”
Aside from giving his main characters names that invite eye rolls and chuckles, Masters offers readers an intelligently written book about big business, ambition, seduction, and danger. The author’s experience working in international finance supplies authenticity to the novel, and his familiarity with Boston adds richness. Characters are complex. On the cusp of 30, and 10 years younger than McBain, O’Daniel is an analytic wunderkind with an hourglass figure wrapped in Gucci; is quick to anger; and still has feelings of inadequacy stemming from a hardscrabble past. The fact that Henry, who grew up dirt poor, recognizes those feelings in her draws her to him. McBain also suffers from flaws. He drinks too much (well, he is Boozy), can’t stop smoking, and still stings from a years-old divorce. But any failings make the high-power investigators more intriguing and relatable. Exploiting Earth’s resources is a timely topic, as are the stock market angle and heart-wrenching descriptions of African poverty. Details about McBain and O’Daniel’s past cases and their supposedly platonic relationship emerge slowly. O’Daniel could be talking about readers when she tells McBain: “Never give them too much too soon....Make them work for it.” Dialogue is sharp and often amusing; for example, one mining executive tells McBain: “We are all ruthless sons of bitches when it comes to the land. At the end of the day, we crawl out of a hole in the ground. Remember that.”
A detective story that’s sexy on the surface and smart to the core.Pub Date: Oct. 30, 2020
ISBN: 978-1-64999-595-7
Page Count: 400
Publisher: Lost Haven Press
Review Posted Online: Nov. 1, 2021
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Dec. 15, 2021
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
Categories: MYSTERY & DETECTIVE | DETECTIVES & PRIVATE INVESTIGATORS | GENERAL MYSTERY & DETECTIVE | SUSPENSE | NATURE
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BOOK REVIEW
An actress and her entourage are kidnapped by Russians in Bohjalian’s uneven thriller.
In 1964, Hollywood’s gossip rags are agog as movie star Katie Barstow marries gallerist David Hill and takes her inner circle along on her honeymoon. And an adventuresome honeymoon it is—on safari in the Serengeti with aging big-game hunter Charlie Patton, who once helped Hemingway bag trophies. But Katie is not the star of this ensemble piece. The populous cast—a who’s who at the beginning is indispensable—includes Katie’s publicist, Reggie Stout; her agent, Peter Merrick; her best friend, Carmen Tedesco, a supporting actress who plays wisecracking sidekicks; and Terrance Dutton, Katie's recent co-star, a Black actor who's challenging Sidney Poitier's singularity in Hollywood. With obvious nods to Hemingway’s worst fear—masculine cowardice—Bohjalian adds in Felix Demeter, Carmen’s husband, a B-list screenwriter who reminds his wife of Hemingway’s weakling Francis Macomber. Felix seems a superfluous double of David, who feels inadequate because Katie is the breadwinner and his father is CIA. Then there’s Katie’s older brother, Billy Stepanov, whose abuse at the hands of their mother shaped the psychologist he is today; Billy’s pregnant wife, Margie; and Benjamin Kikwete, an apprentice safari guide. Thus, a proliferation of voices whose competing perspectives fragment rather than advance the story. The kidnapping plot seems less designed to test each character’s mettle than to exercise Bohjalian’s predilection for minute descriptions of gore. The most heartfelt portrayal here is of the Serengeti and its flora and fauna, but none of the human characters net enough face time to transcend their typecasting. The motives behind the kidnapping might have lent intrigue to the proceedings, but foreshadowing is so slight that the infodump explainer at the end leaves us shocked, mostly at how haphazard the plot is.
Perhaps A-list screenwriters will be able to spin TV gold from this sketchy treatment.Pub Date: May 10, 2022
ISBN: 978-0-385-54482-5
Page Count: 336
Publisher: Doubleday
Review Posted Online: Feb. 9, 2022
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 1, 2022
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A domestic-terrorist plot gives the adopted daughter of storied U.S. Marshal Lucas Davenport her moment to shine.
Veteran oilman Vermilion Wright knows that losing a few thousand gallons of crude is no more than an accounting error to his company but could mean serious money to whomever’s found a way to siphon it off from wells in Texas’ Permian Basin. So he asks Sen. Christopher Colles, Chair of Homeland Security and Government Affairs, to look into it, and Colles persuades 24-year-old Letty Davenport, who’s just quit his employ, to return and partner with Department of Homeland Security agent John Kaiser to track down the thieves. The plot that right-winger Jane Jael Hawkes and her confederates, most of them service veterans with disgruntled attitudes and excellent military skills, have hatched is more dire than anything Wright could have imagined. They plan to use the proceeds from the oil thefts to purchase some black-market C4 essential to a major act of terrorism that will simultaneously express their alarm about the country’s hospitality to illegal immigrants and put the Jael-Birds on the map for good. But they haven’t reckoned with Letty, another kid born on the wrong side of the tracks who can outshoot the men she’s paired with and outthink the vigilantes she finds herself facing—and who, along with her adoptive father, makes a memorable pair of “pragmatists. Really harsh pragmatists” willing to do whatever needs doing without batting an eye or losing a night’s sleep afterward.
Generations may succeed generations, but Sandford’s patented investigation/action formula hasn’t aged a whit. Bring it on.Pub Date: April 12, 2022
ISBN: 978-0-593-32868-2
Page Count: 400
Publisher: Putnam
Review Posted Online: Jan. 26, 2022
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 15, 2022
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