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Summary
Summary
Former Chief Warrant Officer Sam Blackman lost a leg in Iraq and emerged from the V.A. hospital in Asheville, NC, as a bitter civilian without a job or a future. But when he solved a series of local murders, Sam found new meaning for his life. Now he and his partner, Nakayla Robertson, are opening a detective agency. They have high hopes that the thriving mountain region will provide a steady stream of cases.
Their first client, a quirky elderly woman in a retirement community, makes a strange request. She wants Sam to right a wrong she committed more than 70 years ago. Her victim: F. Scott Fitzgerald. Her crime: stealing a manuscript. Sam's task seems simple enough: retrieve the woman's lockbox and deliver the manuscript to Fitzgerald's heirs.
But nothing is simple for Sam. The lockbox is sealed with a swastika, a symbol his client insists predates the Nazis and reflects a scene from The Great Gatsby. Then a security guard is killed and the lockbox disappears. Not only has this investigation triggered a murder, but Sam's final military case has followed him from Iraq and neither he nor anyone close to him is safe....
Reviews (4)
Publisher's Weekly Review
At the start of de Castrique's winning second Sam Blackman mystery (after 2008's Blackman's Coffin), the former U.S. military CID officer and his lover, Nakayla Robertson, are setting up a detective agency in Asheville, N.C. Their eccentric first client, Ethel Barkley, wants them to retrieve a lockbox she claims contains a purloined F. Scott Fitzgerald manuscript. Soon after Sam and Nakayla take possession of the sealed box, someone steals it from their office, killing a security guard in the process. The theft may be part of an attempt to maintain secrecy of an American fascist organization that flourished in the 1930s-or it may be rooted in the immediate past, as rogue Blackwater mercenaries (who cost Sam a leg in Iraq) come after the loot they imagine he stole from them. Ethel's subsequent murder raises the stakes. Readers will hope to see a lot more of the book's amiable characters, in particular, Sam and Nakayla, whose comfortable banter lends the story much of its charm. (Aug.) (c) Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved
Kirkus Review
A complicated mystery with literary roots challenges a rookie gumshoe. Fresh from solving a murder whose origin stretched back nearly a century (Blackman's Coffin, 2008, etc.), Iraqi war veteran Sam Blackman has a new lease on life despite having lost a leg in combat. Nakayla Robertson, the victim's sister, who roused Sam from his postwar mental doldrums and helped him unravel his last case, has become his lover. Returning to Asheville, N.C., he makes her his partner as well in a new detective agency. Elderly Ethel Barkley charms Sam with a yarn about her teacher Laura Guthrie, who worked as a secretary for F. Scott Fitzgerald in the 1930s. Mrs. Barkley wants Sam to go to her bank and retrieve a safe-deposit box that is somehow linked to a "crime" she says she committed against Fitzgerald in 1935. It seems like an easy assignment and an errand of mercy. Sam is unprepared for what he finds at the bank: The box is sealed with hardened metal bearing the imprint of a swastika. The plot thickens when somebody breaks into Sam and Nakayla's office and steals the unopened box, leaving behind the strangled corpse of friendly building security guard Amanda Whitfield. When Sam revisits Mrs. Barkley, she seems far less vague and innocent. Adding more headaches is unfinished business from Sam's hitch in Iraq, involving among other things the controversial Blackwater Company. The warmth of Sam and Nakayla's relationship and Sam's challenged but determined heart make for a great read despite some lead-footed plotting. Copyright Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.
Booklist Review
The first case for the Blackman and Robertson Detective Agency of Asheville, North Carolina, involves the two newly licensed sleuths in the history of their town in the mid-twentieth century and in the more recent past of former warrant officer Sam Blackman, who lost a leg and two comrades in an ambush in Iraq. Blackman no sooner retrieves a lockbox from the bank for elderly client Ethel Barkley, who talks of her connections with F. Scott Fitzgerald, than the box is stolen from his office and a security guard is killed. Within days, Ethel also is dead, apparently tortured before she was murdered. While Blackman and his partner and lover, Nakayla Robertson, puzzle out connections between the lockbox, Fitzgerald, and an old-time Nazi organization, they're also confronted with rogue mercenaries targeting Sam for presumably smuggling loot out of Iraq and double-crossing his accomplices. The second in this series is a solid sequel to Blackman's Coffin (2008), with a good supporting cast, a fine sense of place, and a diverse and capable pair of protagonists.--Leber, Michele Copyright 2009 Booklist
Library Journal Review
The sequel to Blackman's Coffin begins as Sam Blackman and partner Nakayla Robertson open their new detective agency in Asheville, NC. Their first client is an elderly woman who wants Sam to retrieve a locked box containing a manuscript she claims to have stolen from F. Scott Fitzgerald 75 years ago. At the same time, Sam receives word that the rogue Blackwater agents responsible for the loss of his leg and the death of two of his comrades in Iraq are now in the States looking for him. Verdict A fast-paced, complex story line involving Nazis in the American South lays down the background for Blackman to solve a mystery from the past and a threat from the present. An excellent regional mystery, full of local color and historical detail. (c) Copyright 2010. Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.