A Garden of Vipers

April 24, 2006
Carson Ryder and Harry Nautilus, homicide detectives on the Mobile, Ala., police force, hit the ground running in Kerley's appealing third suspense novel (after The Hundredth Man
and The Death Collectors
). In a race against other cops, the pair take up the case of a young journalist, Taneesha Franklin, who's been slashed to death. The victim was close to Carson's girlfriend, TV reporter Dani Danbury, who was mentoring her. Almost every trail leads in some fashion to the Kincannons—a family with great wealth, skeletons in the closet and a matriarch with tenuous control over her fractious, unstable sons. Ryder and Nautilus make an effective team—until one of them is taken out of action and each has to fight for survival on his own. Kerley has a nice feel for the Gulf area, and his detectives are a couple of aces sharing competence, bravery and camaraderie.

June 15, 2006
When Mobile, AL, homicide detectives Carson Ryder and Harry Nautilus find a woman in her car with her throat slashed, a witness reports a mysterious hairy creature fleeing the scene. More deaths follow, with the trail seemingly leading to the Kincannons, a wealthy, dynastic family that gives charitably with one hand while demanding reimbursement with the other. Ryder's TV journalist girlfriend, it turns out, is involved with one of the Kincannons; a sociopath in the family's employ cleans up its messes, and both cops find that madness takes many forms. Veteran writer Kerley ("The Hundredth Man") knows how to keep us and the protagonists guessing -often incorrectly -while heightening the suspense. In less skilled hands, the macabre events of this crime thriller might have been weighted down in melodrama, but Kerley's vivid scenery, bizarre characters, and multiple plot twists keep us turning pages ever faster. Ryder and Nautilus are likely to reappear, perhaps in a movie, but surely in another book in this appealing series. Recommended for all mystery collections." -Roland Person, formerly with Southern Illinois Univ. Lib., Carbondale"

Copyright 2006 Library Journal, LLC Used with permission.

Starred review from May 1, 2006
A young female reporter is tortured then murdered. A blind woman is kidnapped and brutalized but survives, and a high-priced call girl is burned alive. All the cases are connected, but Mobile, Alabama, detectives Carson Ryder and Harry Nautilus aren't sure how. Serial killers are almost compelled by their pathology to commit the same crime again and again, but these murders are dissimilar in forensically significant ways. Meanwhile, as Ryder and Nautilus head-butt various dead ends, Ryder learns that his television reporter girlfriend is being wooed by Lucas Kincannon, the owner of the station and leading son of Mobile's most prestigious, albeit nouveau riche, families. Ryder's distaste for the Kincannon clan, put with a few follow-the-money clues, lands the detectives on a collision course with the city's most powerful forces. Kerley's third Mobile mystery is as compelling as his first two, " The Hundredth Man " (2004) and " The Death Collectors" (2005). His plotting is cleverly believable, his protagonists realistically flawed, and his villains utterly but all-too-humanly evil. The Kincannon tribe will have readers casting suspicious glances at whatever powerful families are leading their local charities. Excellent. (Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2006, American Library Association.)