Review by New York Times Review
GIVE ME YOUR HAND, by Megan Abbott. (Little, Brown, $26.) Abbott, who always immerses readers in hothouse subcultures in her novels - cheerleading, gymnastics - here explores the relationship between competitive scientists at a cutthroat university laboratory. THE SINNERS, by Ace Atkins. (Putnam, $27.) The latest crime novel featuring Sheriff Quinn Colson revolves around a high-end marijuana operation, Fannie Hathcock's thriving strip joint/ brothel and a crooked trucking outfit based in Tupelo, Miss., that cons drivers into hauling stolen goods. ONLY TO SLEEP, by Lawrence Osborne. (Hogarth, $26.) A thriller that jolts Philip Marlowe, Raymond Chandler's iconic private investigator, out of his quiet Mexican retirement and back into the world of scams and seductions. Osborne, who worked as a reporter along the border in the early 1990s, knows Mexico well and he passes that knowledge along to Marlowe. CONAN DOYLE FOR THE DEFENSE: The True Story of a Sensational British Murder, a Quest for Justice, and the World's Most Famous Writer, by Margalit Fox. (Random House, $27.) Fox, a recently retired obituaries writer for The Times, tells the thrilling story of Arthur Conan Doyle's involvement in a real-life case that might have intrigued his hero, Sherlock Holmes. A DOUBLE LIFE, by Flynn Berry. (Viking, $26.) In this thriller, a London doctor searches for her father, a man of power who long ago disappeared after a murder it appears he committed. Berry tells stories about women who seethe over the knowledge of violence and are fueled by a howling grief for its victims. AFTER THE MONSOON, by Robert Karjel. (Harper/HarperCollins, $26.99.) Karjel's Nordic-noir thriller refreshingly shifts the action from bleak Scandinavia to Djibouti, at the Horn of Africa, where spies and kidnappers converge and Swedish special forces confront the region's jihadists. THE PRICE YOU PAY, by Aidán Truhen. (Knopf, $25.95.) Imagine "Pulp Fiction" crossed with Martin Amis on mescaline, and you'll have a sense of this cocaineinfused, high-octane caper, a brilliant latticework of barbed jokes, subtle observations and inventive misbehaviors at once knowing and brutal. NEVERWORLD WAKE, by Marisha Pessl. (Delacorte, $18.99.) Pessl's first young adult novel is a dazzling psychological thriller in which four high school classmates determine to find answers about the death of a friend. THE BANKER'S WIFE, by Cristina Alger. (Putnam, $27.) In Alger's cerebral, expertly paced Swiss thriller, an American expat wife sorts through the conflicting stories surrounding her husband's death. The full reviews of these and other recent books are on the web: nytimes.com/books
Copyright (c) The New York Times Company [August 30, 2019]
Review by Booklist Review
*Starred Review* The Quinn Colson series just keeps getting better and better. Its blend of country noir and badass humor is as smooth as three fingers of Gentleman Jack, and its ensemble cast is uniformly rich any of the multiple supporting characters, including Tibbehah, Mississippi, Country Sheriff Colson's best friend, Boom Kimbrough, and Colson's former deputy, now U.S. Marshal, Lillie Virgil, could easily front their own series. And, as we've remarked before, Atkins does bad guys, painting them in various shades of good and bad, from Falstaffian orneriness to satanic evil, as well as anyone in the genre. That's especially true here, as Colson tangles with two generations of the notorious Pritchard family: Uncle Heath, from the satanic side of the clan, freshly out of prison and looking to reclaim his patriarchy, and his two nephews, Cody and Tyler, race-car drivers whose marijuana-harvesting operation has grown too successful, eventually attracting the Memphis Mob. (All me and Cody wanted to do was smoke a little weed and drive real fast. What's the matter with that?) Atkins throws this gallimaufry of characters together in a roller coaster of a plot that's alternately blood-splattered and tenderhearted, the latter driven by the fact that Quinn's imminent wedding looms over the whole shebang. If you like country noir, and you haven't visited Tibbehah County, you're overdue for a road trip.--Bill Ott Copyright 2018 Booklist
From Booklist, Copyright (c) American Library Association. Used with permission.
Review by Publisher's Weekly Review
Bestseller Atkins's solid if relatively uneventful eighth novel set in Mississippi's Tibbehah County (after 2017's The Fallen) finds Sheriff Quinn Colson, a former Army Ranger, preparing for his wedding, but first he must handle a murder inquiry resulting from a power struggle between rival drug trafficking operations. Fannie Hathcock, who runs a strip bar called Vienna Place, is concerned that the Pritchard brothers, Tyler and Cody, her ostensible business partners, aren't being straight with her. Fannie sends a trusted employee, 20-year-old African-American Ordeen Davis, to check out the Pritchards' property when she believes it to be unoccupied. Unfortunately, Tyler and Cody's uncle Heath, a racist ex-con who's been jailed for selling marijuana, is on hand to spot Ordeen and shoot him in the back. Davis's mother, an old friend of Quinn's family, beseeches the sheriff to get justice for her son. Not a whole lot of interest follows. The entry works best as a long setup for major developments promised for book nine. Author tour. Agent: Esther Newberg, ICM. (July) © Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved.
(c) Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved
Review by Kirkus Book Review
Quinn Colson, the sheriff of Mississippi's Tibbehah County, juggles old-school and newfangled gangs while praying that someone will get him to the church on time.Now that Quinn's finally looking forward to getting married and acquiring an instant family that includes nurse Maggie Powers and her 7-year-old son, Brandon, he'd love to cut back on the crime-busting. Fate, as usual, has other plans. Heath Pritchard, the incorrigible marijuana grower Quinn's late uncle and predecessor Hamp Beckett locked up 23 years ago, has just been released, and he's eager to horn in on his nephews, dirt-track racers Tyler and Cody Pritchard, who've been carrying on the family business on their own less obtrusive terms. Heath's unforgettable way of announcing his return to his nearest and dearest is to tell them that he needs their help disposing of the remains of Ordeen Davis, whom he caught nosing around on the Pritchard spread. Fannie Hathcock wouldn't have sent Ordeen, her bartender and general factotum at Vienna's Place, the county's premier cathouse, over there in the first place if she hadn't been getting squeezed between the Pritchard boys, who'd been violating a long-standing agreement with her by running way more weed than they could have been raising themselves, and the Dixie Mafia, for whom she's been laundering money and providing other services for years and who now send a pair of hands-on managers to Vienna's Place. The only one who's in a position to do anything about this mess, it seems, is Quinn's old friend Boom Kimbrough, whom DEA agent Nathalie Wilkins is pressing to go undercover at Sutpen Trucking, still another major player in the drug trade. Will Boom last long enough to serve as Quinn's best man?Though it's amusing on its own terms, the constant infighting among lowlifes keeps this installment below Atkins' high standard (The Fallen, 2017, etc.). When bad guys are mostly targeting other bad guys, there's just not that much for good guys to do besides stand aside and watch the carnage. Copyright Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.
Copyright (c) Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.
