Stephan Talty

Rating: 4* of five

The Publisher Says: In this explosive debut thriller by the New York Times bestselling author of Empire of Blue Water, a brilliant homicide detective returns home, where she confronts a city’s dark demons and her own past while pursuing a brutal serial killer on a vengeful rampage.

Absalom “Abbie” Kearney grew up an outsider in her own hometown. Even being the adopted daughter of a revered cop couldn’t keep Abbie’s troubled past from making her a misfit in the show more working-class Irish American enclave of South Buffalo. And now, despite a Harvard degree and a police detective’s badge, she still struggles to earn the respect and trust of those she’s sworn to protect. But all that may change, once the killing starts.

When Jimmy Ryan’s mangled corpse is found in a local church basement, this sadistic sacrilege sends a bone-deep chill through the winter-whipped city. It also seems to send a message—one that Abbie believes only the fiercely secretive citizens of the neighborhood known as “the County” understand. But in a town ruled by an old-world code of silence and secrecy, her search for answers is stonewalled at every turn, even by fellow cops. Only when Abbie finds a lead at the Gaelic Club, where war stories, gossip, and confidences flow as freely as the drink, do tongues begin to wag—with desperate warnings and dire threats. And when the killer’s mysterious calling card appears on her own doorstep, the hunt takes a shocking twist into her own family’s past. As the grisly murders and grim revelations multiply, Abbie wages a chilling battle of wits with a maniac who sees into her soul, and she swears to expose the County’s hidden history—one bloody body at a time.

My Review: The Doubleday UK meme, a book a day for July 2014, is the goad I'm using to get through my snit-based unwritten reviews. Today's prompt is to discuss one's favorite crime novel, in honor of some British crime-novel beano.

Now. There are those *significant glares* who claim to be all innocent tra-leee-laaaaaah when accosted and reminded of their culpability as Satanic Book Warblers. Oh, just all the eye-battings and who-meings and fan-wavings of an amateur production of Gone With The Wind. Here is the evidence linking my purchase of this novel from its proximate warbler Bonnie to the ur-Warbler, the coven's second-in-command after the Greater Trilliumated Warbler herself, the Ombre-crested Satanic Book Warbler. Go on, click through. The guilty party is even bolded for your convenience.

Despite there being naggingly annoying lapses in continuity at three or four points, I was sucked into the violent and rage-filled vortex of this book from the get-go. The story, a standard one, is told at a breathless pace in direct, unpretentious language. The setting is seared into my memory. I feel as if I could find the park, drive the streets, point to the places I'd read about. I'm sure as hell not stopping for the cops there, Absalom/Abbie excepted.

The family secrets, the community guilt, the larger and wider implications of the vicious and bloody killings, make this procedural far more than an afternoon's entertainment. It's not Art, it's excitement! It's brutal and tough and doesn't give a flying fuck if your girlie-girl feelies are all bent. It's too busy setting you up for the next bashing!

I liked the hell out of it. It's good, every now and then, to sluice the nicey-nice from one's brain with a bracing dose of mean as fuck because I wanna be. There is NO oxytocin released in the reading of this book. Adrenaline, yes; androgen, oh my yes. We won't go into the testosterone release figures. Post-menopausal women are cautioned that they might find themselves assuming male secondary characteristics.

The sensitive members of the party are STRONGLY cautioned not to so much as handle this book. Don't do it, don't even contemplate it. Not for yinz.

Fans of the 87th Precinct, we found you a new writer to follow! show less

The sanctity of a local Buffalo, NY church is forever compromised when the maimed corpse of Jimmy Ryan is discovered in the basement. Tied to a chair, eyelids cut off as if he were made to look at something, the sight of Ryan's body sends a shock through the town. Author Stephan Talty describes the southern part of Buffalo, the County, as having a "small-town feeling". Its best days behind it, the County is a place where news travels fast and nothing stays secret for long.

Enter Absolam show more "Abbie" Kearny. Despite growing up in the County, she has always been a kind of outsider. Adopted at a young age by John Kearny, a local police legend, she has now returned to follow in her father's infamous footsteps. Tasked with the Ryan case, she is quickly met with resistance from the local townspeople and police.

The County is mostly made up of Irish immigrants. As Abbie digs deeper into the murder, connections, both historical and personal, begin to reveal themselves. As further murders occur, Abbie struggles to stay ahead of the killer. The Buffalo police run an investigation parallel to hers, and Abbie soon finds herself a suspect in the case. As the tension rises Abbie is forced to question her sanity and family history, all culminating in a shocking twist that is sure to leave readers riveted.

With his debut work of fiction, Stephan Talty instantly places himself among the great modern thriller authors such as Dennis Lehane and Tana French. Like Lehane and French, Talty manages to maintain exceptional characters, setting and suspense without ever sacrificing the integrity of his writing. This novel could have easily become a standard thriller, but Talty daftly takes his time to build each character, allowing the suspense to stay at a constant boil. In Abbie, Talty has imagined a believable protagonist, whose flaws and vulnerability allows readers to connect with her emotions and desire to succeed. I was hooked on this novel from beginning to end. Fascinated by the serial killer who tells, "his autobiography through corpses", I was shocked at the final turn that the events took. This exceptional novel has everything thriller fans have come to expect and gives them more than they could ever have hoped for. show less

"Agent Garbo may have been largely responsible for the success of D-Day." That claim seems totally irrational - before you read the book. After reading the story of his exploits, you may reconsider your original opinion. There is no question that the soldiers who participated in D-Day and who experienced tremendously high casualty rates deserve the utmost in respect, admiration and appreciation. But what would have happened if in the first few days after the landing the Germans had moved show more their reserves to oppose the Allied troops? Or if the Germans had spent more effort in fortifying Normandy in the first place? Read "Agent Garbo" and you will find out the astonishing levels of deception and diversion that the Allies used. Most of us have heard about the dummy tanks and fake airplanes that were used to fool the Axis powers. But did you know that an entire fake Army was created that was supposed to make the "real" landing at Calais, and that Germany decided not to commit its reserves at Normandy so they could move on Calais when the real invasion came? And did you know that a central part of that deception was a Spanish citizen who was so motivated to stop Germany that he tried three times, unsuccessfully, to become a spy for the British, and ultimately developed his own fake spy network that he used - on his own - to give disinformation to the Germans?

This is a story that could easily be dismissed as the product of an over-active imagination - if it weren't so well-researched and filled with corroborating detail. It hasn't got quite the page-turning quality of a James Bond yarn, but the fact that this is a true story more than makes up for that. If you want to learn a fascinating bit of history or even if you just want a good spy story, this is the book you should read. show less

This is very engaging history of the The Brethren, Capt. Henry Morgan's real Pirates of the Caribbean. Along with the drama of a fireship ruse and a city-destroying earthquakes, it is interesting the actuality of buccaneer life. Rather than a criminal navy, they were more like a criminal marine corps: ships were a conveyance to get them to coastal settlements and departure points for laying siege, such as the pivotal struggle for Panama City having marched over 50 miles inland.

While it is show more not develed into detail, buccaneer psychology is partly analyzed. Why did they continue after even having money, instead choosing to be profligate and tying themselves to their lives of kidnapping, slaving, ransoming, torture, and theft. It actually appears they were an anarchistic collective of murderous sociopaths. show less