Collision Course

October 5, 2020
At the start of Hilton’s hard-boiled but softhearted seventh thriller featuring Portland, Maine, PIs Tess Grey and Nicholas “Po” Villere (after Rough Justice), Tess and Po are looking for runaway teen Hayley Cameron, whom they trace to the Bangor apartment of Hayley’s best friend, college student Madison Toner. The relatively simple investigation gets complicated when the detectives discover that Dominick Burgess, a dangerous criminal, is targeting Madison because she’s running a lucrative insurance scam. Burgess and his cohorts want a cut of the profits and are willing to hurt anyone who objects. Tess, Po, and Pinky Leclerc, a hulking associate whom Po met when they both were inmates at the Louisiana State Penitentiary, try to persuade the scammers to go straight. When that fails, they try to interfere with the gangsters, who reply with kidnapping and torture. Through it all, Tess maintains her faith that most people will do the right thing if they get the chance. Tough-minded characters who take the notion of “conscience” seriously more than compensate for some clumsy exposition. Readers will hope Tess and Po will be back soon. Agent: Luigi Bonomi, LBA Literary (U.K.).

September 15, 2020
The title Hilton saved for this seventh adventure of private eye Tess Grey and her fiance, Nicolas "Po" Villere, would have suited any of the first six but is even more appropriate here. After telling off her adoptive mother, Jessie Cameron, and dumping her boyfriend, bar busboy Jacob Doyle, Hayley Cameron has gone the extra mile by running away from home. Jessie acknowledges that her wild child is 21 but still wants Tess to find her, assure her of her mother's love, and plead with her to come home. The complication, to use one of those understated words that rarely comes up here, is that Madison Toner, who's Tess and Po's most likely lead to information about Hayley's whereabouts, is busy working an insurance scam together with her father, lobsterman Mike Toner, and that Kelly Ambrose, the imperious wife of major player Blake Ambrose, has just sent a trio of hirelings to muscle in on their operation, skimming 50% of their receipts off the top. So Hayley's resolve to put her mother in the rear-view mirror is exceeded only by everyone else's determination to keep this interlocking criminal directorate under wraps. The moments when Tess and Po catch up with Hayley and Tess gets to make her speech on behalf of Jessie are only the signals for further developments that include kidnapping, extended scenes of torture, a fatal car crash, and a finale in which the malefactors, outwitted and outmuscled by Tess and Po, turn on each other. Action galore. The circular firing squad that ends the tale and several characters is a particularly nice touch.

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November 1, 2020
Boston PI Tess Grey is simply seeking information for a case she's working, but readers of Hilton's recent and ultraviolent Rough Justice (2020) won't be surprised when her source turns difficult, and she beats the bloody hell out of him. She and her partner, fianc� Po Villere, are on an innocent quest: a distraught mother has hired them to locate her daughter. They succeed quickly, then discover something sinister going on: the girl is close to a computer-based scam. The players are ""small potatoes scammers,"" but their operation has attracted the attention of brass-knuckle criminals. Although it's not on their agenda, Tess and Po see it as their duty to fight this evil. After an overlong expository section, the forces of light and darkness clash in a 100-plus-page finale that boils over with exquisitely detailed kidnapping, bonebreaking, and waterboarding. A riotous action read, luring readers into cheering when Po has a scumbag at his mercy and exclaims, ""I've only just gotten started with you.

COPYRIGHT(2020) Booklist, ALL RIGHTS RESERVED.