Box Nine - Hardcover

JACK O'CONNELL is the author of several acclaimed novels. O'Connell has been described as a cyberpunk Dashiell Hammett. His dark, noir-ish crime stories are dragging the crime genre into new realms. He lives in Wooster, Massachusetts, with his wife and two children.

This won the publisher's Mysterious Discovery contest for best first crime novel and for the most part the story moves winningly indeed. In a city very much like Worcester, Mass., detective Lenore Thomas is teamed with a Chinese linguist as part of a police task force tracking down the makers and dealers of a new drug that induces murderous rage. Another detective, the mayor's mistress, is told to give inside info on the force's progress to her lover. Lenore's twin brother, Ike, a mailman, starts to find grisly objects in an unused P.O. box. As Lenore closes in on Cortez, boss of the city's tenderloin, she and the linguist begin a torrid affair. There's some wonderful local color, a large and varied cast of characters, some gore, a little steamy sex and a bloody climax. Unfortunately there are also a few improbable events (Ike's plain-Jane boss submitting sexually to a drug lord who calls himself the Paraclete), a tendency to pretension (Lenore: "Memory has never brought you comfort?" Cortez: "Not that I recall") and the Paraclete's not very surprising identity. But there's also real talent here. O'Connell's a definite discovery. BOMC alternate.
Copyright 1991 Reed Business Information, Inc.