Mission Road

Edgar finalist Corbett's hard-hitting third Frank Yakabuski mystery picks up where 2018's Cape Diamond left off. The "$1.2 billion of uncut diamonds" stolen in Cape Diamond are now thought to be hidden around the town of Springfield, Ontario, where Jason McAllister, a postgraduate mathematics student from Syracuse University, has gone missing. A few days later, a map indicating the diamonds' possible location shows up on the still missing McAllister's Facebook page. This prompts "The Great Springfield Diamond Hunt," as the local newspaper calls it. Hordes of amateur treasure hunters arrive on the scene, as do warring criminal gangs, a professional assassin, and a legendary robber whose exploits have been immortalized in a song. Yakabuski, a senior detective in the Springfield Regional Police Service, stands tall throughout as he investigates kidnapping, murder, extortion, and more. Corbett veers at times between too much repeated background information and not quite enough. Even those familiar with the earlier entries might wish they had a scorecard. Agent: Robert Lecker, Robert Lecker Agency (Canada). (June)

The news that diamonds worth $1.2 million lifted from Canada's De Kirk Mines in Cape Diamond (2018) are hidden somewhere off Mission Road unleashes "the Great Springfield Diamond Hunt." The first apparent casualty is Jason McAllister, an American math student who vanishes shortly after announcing his intention of hiking Mission Road during a frigid February six weeks after the original heist and the kidnapping and return of Grace Dumont--whose late grandfather Gabriel Dumont was head of the Travellers gang--along with a million-dollar gem for her inconvenience. When McAllister's Facebook account posts a map of the search area 10 days later, Senior Detective Frank Yakabuski, who's already linked McAllister to main-chance criminal Robert Allen Bangles, aka Bobby Bangs, knows that other fortune hunters will follow. Once Yakabuski succeeds in neutralizing a quartet of mobsters visiting from Buffalo, the treasure hunt settles into a competition among three local gangs: the Shiners, whose chief, Sean Morrissey, the alleged mastermind behind the theft, is eager to "use our enemies against each other"; the Travellers, now under Linus Desjardins; and the Popeyes, whose acting head is Henri Lepine. Mexican assassin Cambino Cortez, Morrissey's presumed partner, scurries from one rendezvous to the next, winnowing the cast as he closes in on the jewels. Despite the sky-high body count and some powerful individual scenes, this sequel suffers from sequelitis: In the absence of a beginning or an unforeseen ending, it's all middle. Lots of diamonds, lots of homicides, not a whole lot of other stuff. Copyright (c) Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.

Frank Yakabuski looked at the man sitting the other side of the kitchen table and couldn't decide what to think of him. Calvin Jayne. Forty-eight years old. Drove cab for Shamrock Taxi, a mill-hand before that. Lived in a one-bedroom walk-up on Derry Street. No signs of a wife or children. Cases of Old Milwaukee - cheapest beer at most dépanneurs - stacked by the back door. Jayne wore grey sweat-pants and a rib-tee-shirt that didn't cover his stomach, short enough to show three rolls of pale, mid-winter skin and tufts of sweaty, black hair. It was too hot in the apartment. He was overcompensating, although the cabbie wasn't the only one doing that. Although winter had been late arriving on the Northern Divide, when it came it was bitter cold. The salt trucks couldn't run most days because of the cold and there was black ice everywhere. Highway fatalities were common. So were animals you'd see in the morning, standing in some distant field with fog swirling around them, scrawny black bear, teetering moose, beasts awoken from their hibernation and not sure what to do next. It was a winter for ill-fated wonders. The first fortune hunter arrived the second week of February. His name was Jason McAllister and he was a post-graduate mathematics student from Syracuse University who checked into the Grainger Hotel after arriving on a direct flight from Toronto. Because he showed no sign of needing to be in Springfield -- he didn't check in with the gear of a hydro worker or a tree-marker; didn't seem to be looking for work at the saw mills or the truck yards - he was noticed. During the next two days McAllister was seen shopping at Murphy's Sporting Goods, where he purchased packets of dehydrated food and some propane tanks. And the Stedman's department store, where he purchased wool socks, long underwear and several toques. He used the business suite on the second floor of the Grainger several times, where there was free wi-fi. Many of the staff in the hotel recall him working on a laptop. On his third day in Springfield he checked out of the hotel and took a cab to the parking lot of the Mission Road trailhead. His mother reported him missing two days later. Excerpted from Mission Road: A Frank Yakabuski Mystery by Ron Corbett All rights reserved by the original copyright owners. Excerpts are provided for display purposes only and may not be reproduced, reprinted or distributed without the written permission of the publisher.