Box Nine - Softcover

Jack O’Connell (b. 1959) is the author of five critically acclaimed, New York Times–bestselling crime novels. Born in Worcester, Massachusetts, O’Connell’s earliest reading was the dime novel paperbacks and pulp fiction sold in his corner drug store, whose hard-boiled attitude he carried over to his own writing. He has cited his hometown’s bleak, crumbling infrastructure as an influence on Quinsigamond, the fictional city where his first four novels were set, and whose decaying industrial landscape served as a backdrop for strange thrillers which earned O’Connell a reputation as a “cyberpunk Dashiell Hammett.”

O’Connell’s most recent novel was The Resurrectionist (2008). A former student at Worcester’s College of the Holy Cross, he now teaches there, not far from where he and his family live just outside of his hometown.

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.
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