Lesa's Book Critiques: Kevin’s Corner Annex – Edge by Tracy Clark
Showing posts with label Tracy Clark. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Tracy Clark. Show all posts
Monday, December 08, 2025
Tuesday, December 02, 2025
Publication Day Review: EDGE: A Detective Harriet Foster Thriller
EDGE: A Detective Harriet Foster
Thriller
is the latest read in an excellent police procedural series that began in
January 2023 with HIDE.
This series by Tracy Clark is one that builds off of the previous books as characters evolve
over time. This is not a static series as characters are affected by cases as
well as personal life events. As a result, it is strongly recommended to have read
the previous books in order before embarking on this complex and very enjoyable
read.
It is spring in Chicago and the season
of renewal and yet the rain and the cold make it clear otherwise for Detective
Harriet Foster. Known to all as “Harri," she is on a path at the lakefront thinking about the past, her dead, and scores
that have not been settled. The justice she has sought these many months over
past events has not happened nor has her ability to deal with those traumas
really improved. Her mind is full of turmoil as she walks, putting one foot
forward, as she does every day at work, the best she can.
That is until she sees the prone figures
in some sort of concrete bowl in the local skate park. The weather has been
horrible so partying is not happening. They aren’t moving either and don’t seem
to hear her or to be able to respond from where they are behind the locked
chain link fence. A fence that somebody from the city should have unlocked hours
earlier.
Detective Harriet Foster has no choice.
She has to get over the fence and check on the people lying motionless. It
takes some time to get over that fence and get to them. It is pretty clear that
they had been drinking. It is also clear that they each took something and
things went very bad. The young man is dead. The young woman snuggled against
him is alive, barely, and Detective Foster summons help. She does everything
she can to keep her amongst the living during an agonizing long wait for
assistance.
The young woman who almost died from the
drugs as well as hypothermia thanks to the rain, wind, and the cold, is Ella
Louise Byrne. A sophomore at the University of Chicago, she also has a business
card for Detective Matt Kelley. The same Detective Matt Kelley who is on her
team.
The same Detective Matt Kelly who is enraged
at what happened to his niece. He is willing to burn down his career and the
city itself to find those responsible. That means it is up to Detective Harriet
Foster and the rest of the team to not only find and arrest those responsible,
but to make sure a good cop doesn’t go totally rogue and do something stupid that
will ruin his career and maybe his life.
Seeking justice has long been a theme throughout this series. It is front and center here in EDGE: A Detective Harriet Foster Thriller by Tracy Clark. If you have not read these excellent police procedurals, you are really missing out.
Strongly recommended.
Amazon Associate Purchase Link: https://amzn.to/418cDyw
My reading copy from the publisher, Thomas
& Mercer, though NetGalley, months ago with no expectation of a positive review.
Kevin R. Tipple ©2025
Thursday, December 19, 2024
Jungle Red Writers: Matching Pipe to Psychopath
Jungle Red Writers: Matching Pipe to Psychopath: HANK PHILLIPPI RYAN: One of my favorite things in the world to say is: Reds and readers, here is Tracy Clark ! Tracy, as you well know, is a...
Monday, December 09, 2024
Aubrey Nye Hamilton Reviews: Echo by Tracy Clark
Tracy Clark’s latest book is Echo
(Thomas & Mercer, December 2024). Set in a Chicago winter, her third
story about police detective Harriet Foster has dual story lines of revenge and
attempts to right long-ago wrongs.
Foster doesn’t have time to
take her coat off one Sunday morning, she is called to a field on the edge of
the Belverton College campus, where a student lies dead. Brice Collier is the
only son of the fabulously wealthy Sebastian Collier, who owned the nearby
house that Brice and some of his friends shared during the scholastic year.
Brice was known for his over-the-top Saturday night parties. Because of his
father’s money, the college took a hands-off stance on anything affecting
Brice, giving him the illusion that he could do or say anything he wanted
without repercussion. This time he seems to have gotten too drunk to realize he
was outdoors and died of alcohol poisoning and hypothermia. The fact that
another student living in the same house died in similar circumstances 30 years
previously did not escape the police.
While Foster and her new
partner, a certified badass named Vera Li, try to pin down the students that
were at the party, all of whom are curiously evasive about who was where when, Foster
is getting anonymous phone calls. The male caller is making vague threats about
revenge for past misdeeds and claims the death of her former partner is a
punishment for Foster. Her recently dead partner was determined to have
committed suicide, Foster believes she was killed by this anonymous caller.
That the police department refused to look into the calls and Foster’s
suspicions noticeably strains her relationship with her manager.
Grieving for her dead partner,
Foster works relentlessly on the Collier case, finding more and more parallels
between the old case and the new, while she tries to identify her anonymous
caller and his motives after hours. Her new partner confronts her on the brutal
pace she is undertaking and insists on helping identify the anonymous tormentor
to remove the distraction from Foster’s life.
Clark creates clear,
well-defined, and credible characters. Even the background members of the
Homicide group who don’t get much time on the page stand out distinctly from
each other. The old school detective who antagonizes everyone but becomes an
emotional basket case over his partner’s sick child is a perfect example. The
cold distant Sebastian Collier and his troubleshooter Lange are two more. Vera
Li is a fine invention, she and Foster make a powerhouse of a team. I look
forward to seeing more of her. As always in Clark’s books, the city of Chicago
is a powerful secondary character.
An inventive use of the
revenge motive, a crisp narrative, and fine characters. This book made the Washington
Post list of best 2024 mysteries for a good reason. Recommended.
·
Publisher: Thomas & Mercer (December
3, 2024)
·
Language:
English
·
Paperback:
364 pages
·
ISBN-10:
1662517327
·
ISBN-13:
978-1662517327
Amazon Associate Purchase Link: https://amzn.to/3ZsDMf1
Aubrey Nye Hamilton ©2024
Aubrey Hamilton is a former librarian who works on Federal It projects by day and reads mysteries at night.
Tuesday, December 03, 2024
Review: Echo: A Harriet Foster Thriller by Tracy Clark
It is late February in a very cold and icy Chicago as Echo:
A Harriet Foster Thriller by Tracy Clark begins. Ice pellets are
falling hard this morning and Detective Foster’s day has already been nasty before
she gets inside the station and to her desk. She doesn’t even have a chance to
take off her coat before her and Detective Symansky are out the door and on the
way to a frozen field outside Belverton College.
The field, located outside of Hardwicke House has a
dead body. The Hardwick House, that goes back to the Gilded Age, is owned by
the well-known billionaire, Sebestian Coller. As it happens, the body out in
the frozen icy wasteland of a field is his young son, Bruce Collier. He is
shirtless, reeking of alcohol and vomit, and clearly has been out in the field
for hours.
Was it a party gone wrong? Did he get drunk and disoriented,
wandered outside into the field, collapse, and freeze to death?
Or was it murder?
Before long, as readers already know from the first
chapter, it most assuredly was murder. Not was it murder,
the people behind it are not done yet as they have a score to settle. Detective
Harriet Foster and others have a complicated case to work while at the same
time Foster is the target of another killer.
A complicated and very good police procedural, Echo is
the latest installment of an excellent series that started with Hide, followed
by Fall. Readers are encouraged to read in order, starting with Hide, as
previous events are discussed here.
Amazon Associate Purchase Link: https://amzn.to/3ZxEqIo
Aubrey will also be reviewing the book here this
coming Monday.
My reading copy came from the publisher, Thomas &
Mercer, by way of NetGalley, with no expectation of a review.
Kevin R. Tipple ©2024
Friday, December 29, 2023
Tuesday, December 05, 2023
Review: Fall: A Detective Harriet Foster Thriller by Tracy Clark
It has been a few
months since Hide
as Fall: A Harriet Foster Thriller by Tracy Clark begins
and things are still rather tense in the squad room. Detective Foster is still
haunted by the past and doing her best to function in her minimalist life. She
works, goes home, and stares at the tree outside her house, and sleeps. That
daily ritual is interrupted by having to attend the resentencing hearing of her
son’s killer at the Cook County Courthouse.
Trying to explain
to others the depths of her loss is unfathomable. A situation that Marin Shaw
is in though in a far different way.
For one thing, her
child, Zoe, is still very much alive. But, Marin Shaw has not seen her daughter
in three years because former Chicago Alderman Marin Shaw has been in prison.
An alcoholic, a lawyer, a wife, a mother, and a progressive Democrat member of
the city council, until her personal house of cards came tumbling down. She did
the crime and she has done the time though she could have made life far easier
if she had rolled over for prosecutors and told all.
She steps out of
Logan Correctional one winter’s day, a free woman though her guilt about what
she has done is its own form of prison. Thankfully, her lawyer and friend,
Charlotte Moore, is awaiting her in order to whisk her away from the prying
eyes of the media and others outside the prison walls.
The plan, and it is
so not her plan, is for Marin to go to the condo downtown as her husband, Will,
and Zoe, wait for the latest round of media scrutiny to fade. Will does not
want Marin at the house so as to not stress Zoe. All Marin cares about is Zoe,
so she agrees to the situation for now.
At the same time,
the story about Marin Shaw is once again a media focus. She wasn’t alone in the
corruption, but she stayed quiet. With her publicized release, some of her
fellow aldermen are quite concerned as to what she will do now. There are weak
links in the corrupt group, as there always are, and threats are made between
several group members.
Then the murders
begin.
Detective Harriet
Foster and Li catch the first murder. Alderman Deanna Leonard is dead on the
sixth floor of a Chicago parking garage from what some would conclude was a self-inflicted
gunshot wound. Much the same way Foster’s old partner committed suicide, also with
no warning, sometime back. And while Leonard’s death reminds her of that, there
are differences, and Foster is not convinced it was a suicide. The Especially
after the medical examiner confirms it definitely was not.
At the time of
Shaw’s trial, it was widely speculated that Alderman Leonard was part of the
latest crowd of crooks at city hall. But, Shaw never named names. That leaves
Foster and Li wondering if Shaw took vengeance? Or was some sort of random
killing just hours after Shaw got out. Did she do it? Did she hire someone? Is
she involved?
There are many
questions to answer and a lot to do.
Fall: A Harriet Foster Thriller by Tracy Clark is a complicated novel that works very well in all areas. Multiple storylines with many moving pieces, it is best to have read Hide before reading this book. Character development for Foster and several others continues and builds upon what readers already know and does so while not interfering with the main storyline. Rich, complicated, and full of detail, this second book in the police procedural series is just like the first, a mighty good read.
My digital ARC came from the publisher, Thomas & Mercer by way of the NetGalley system with no promise of a review.
Kevin R. Tipple
©2023
Saturday, April 08, 2023
Tuesday, March 21, 2023
Review: Hide: A Detective Harriet Foster Thriller by Tracy Clark
Hide: A Detective Harriet Foster Thriller by Tracy Clark
is the first book in a new police procedural series. It introduces a wide-ranging
cast of characters and establishes a ground floor for what one can expect going
forward. The solidly good book revolves around Detective Harriet Foster who has
been through quite a lot in the last few months and years.
A black woman in a heavily male
dominated environment, she brings a lot of baggage to her new posting in
Chicago. Others have expectations who she is and those expectations may or may
not be accurate. Word of what happened just
a few weeks ago has made it to her new boss and colleagues at CPD’s District One.
Her new partner, Jim Lonergan, appears to be your classic old school, non-politically
correct cop straight out of Hollywood casting. Like the old rickety desk she is
assigned, he is not fixable, so the two clash almost from the second they lay
eyes on each other. Things are wrong from almost the get go, but that does not
matter as they have a body this Monday morning.
It is also going to be a very high-profile
case as the body was dumped on the Riverwalk. Part of the nearby legendary, Magnificent
Mile, the body has a lot of witnesses. Many of those same witnesses have
thoughts about how quickly police responded to the scene as Lonergan and Foster
arrive to work the case. The murder and subsequent dumping of the body in a
very public place means the pressure is on from all sides to solve the case.
It also won’t be the last body with the
same signature style.
What follows is a complex and very
enjoyable read. Marketed as a thriller, it comes across to this reader as a police
procedural. Regardless of the marketing label, Foster, as well as nearly
everyone in the read, are complex. The focus is on Foster, but the secondary
characters get extensive details about themselves as well. None of the characters
are simple as even Jim Lonergan is a bit more complex than it first appears.
Then there is the complexity of the case
as the read shifts to follow other characters besides Harriet Foster. Plenty of
action, misdirection, and a hunt for a killer drive Hide: A Detective
Harriet Foster Thriller forward at a steady pace. The very good read is
well worth your time.
The second book in the series, Fall, is currently scheduled to come out on December 5th.
Make sure you check out Lesa Holstine’s far more detailed review from last December on her site here.
Amazon Associate Purchase Link: https://amzn.to/3Z6Gzcq
My paperback reading copy came from the
Park Forest Branch of the Dallas Public Library System.
Kevin R. Tipple ©2023
Friday, February 10, 2023
Wednesday, December 28, 2022
Monday, June 06, 2022
Aubrey Nye Hamilton Reviews: Runner by Tracy Clark
Tracy Clark’s
fourth book about Chicago private investigator Cassandra Raines is a fine
mystery and a devastating take-down of the nation’s foster care system.
In Runner
(Kensington, 2021) recovering addict Leesa Evans asks for Cass Raines’ help in
finding her daughter Ramona. Evans lost custody of Ramona during the worst of
her struggles with her addiction but she’s clean now and working hard to save
enough money to make a home for her daughter. Ramona has been in foster care
for five years, moved from family to family, regardless of how well she is
doing in any one place. Evans has filed a missing persons report with the
Chicago police but feels that her race and social status are keeping the police
from taking her seriously. (The Washington Post reported on May 23,
2022, Health and Human Services Inspector General findings that foster children
are typically missing more than a month before they are found. In a grim coda,
the Post goes on to state that thousands of foster children are never
found at all.)
The police
think Ramona ran away. Raines is overwhelmed with the idea that anyone should
be outside during a brutal Chicago winter. As she talks to the police, case
workers, foster families, anyone who might help find the girl, she reminds them
to look out their window and remember how cold it is. In a wonderfully done
sequence Raines hitches a ride with her nun friend Barbara who distributes
supplies to street people at night, hoping to find someone who has seen Ramona
or knows where she might be. She jumps from the bus to chase a potential
informant, frightening her friend and the elderly nun driving the bus. When she
returns, the wrath of the tiny bus driver intimidates Raines far more than
anyone else she’s encountered so far.
Strong
writing and a concise straightforward narrative made this book a read-all-at-once
title. Readers don’t need to start with the earlier books, this one stands well
enough on its own to be read out of order. Highly recommended.
Starred review from Publishers Weekly. Winner of the 2022 Sue Grafton Memorial Award. Shortlisted for Anthony Award for Best Novel.
·
Publisher: Kensington (June
29, 2021)
·
Language: English
·
Hardcover: 304 pages
·
ISBN-10: 1496732014
·
ISBN-13: 978-1496732019
Aubrey Nye Hamilton ©2022
Aubrey Hamilton is a former librarian who works
on Federal It projects by day and reads mysteries at night.
Tuesday, February 15, 2022
Friday, July 09, 2021
Wednesday, June 30, 2021
Friday, February 05, 2021
Sunday, June 28, 2020
Tuesday, June 04, 2019
Review: Broken Places: A Chicago Mystery by Tracy Clark
Former Chicago PD officer Cass Rains barely survived a shooting
two years ago. These days she runs a one person detective agency and does a few
other things including playing chess with Father Ray Heaton. Father Ray is
family as he is a father figure and more to her.
She knew something was up with him and he finally told her some of
it. She thought she had it covered. She was wrong as Father Ray is soon dead in
his church along with a young man who may or may not have been in a local gang.
The lead detective on the case has quickly decided that it was a murder/
suicide and won’t listen to her or consider anything she says. Farraday is the self-serving
idiot that nearly got her killed two years ago.
The
idea that he is handling the case and still has a job, let alone a promotion,
is bad enough. The fact that he is mishandling a case so important to her is
unacceptable. If he won’t work with her, she will go around him. If that does
not work, she will go through him. The case is going to get solved even if it
kills her as she owes Father Ray.
Oh,
and biological Daddy is back in town and wants to reconnect as if life isn’t
hell enough as it is.
First
in a series, Broken Places: A Chicago Mystery, is
an engrossing and complicated read. It has plenty of action, characters of
depth and breath, and a very complicated mystery. Built from stereotypical elements
which then are morphed into a read that is truly different, this is a hard boiled
mystery. Cass is more than a bit sarcastic in dialogue and inner monologue as
she does not tolerate fools lightly. Some readers may not appreciate that fact
or understand that the read is not a police procedural as some reviews
mistakenly state. This is a hard boiled mystery.
Much is
going on here in the main storyline as well as the second one and most of it is
far too complicated to go into in a review. Simply put, Broken Places: A Chicago Mystery
by Tracy Clark is a very good read well worth your time. If I did the best
book of the year list, like so many other folks do, this would be right up
there in my top five. Considering it has now been nominated for an Anthony
Award, I guess those folks agree with me.
The second
book in the series, Borrowed Time, was released on May 28, 2019. Art Taylor hosted
author Tracy Clark recently on his blog, The
First Two Pages, where she spends some time talking about this book.
Broken Places: A Chicago Mystery
Tracy Clark
Kensington Publishing Corp
May 2018
ISBN# 978-1-4967-1487-9
Hardback (also available in digital, paperback, and audio formats)
352 Pages
$26.00
Material
supplied by the good folks of the Dallas Public Library System.
Kevin
R. Tipple ©2019
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