Box Nine

Lenore Thomas, a burnt-out narcotics cop in an aging American city, works on the streets fighting a dangerous designer drug ring while her postal worker twin brother finds strange things turning up in P.O. Box Nine

This won the publisher's Mysterious Discovery contest for best first crime novel and for the most part the story moves winningly indeed. In a city very much like Worcester, Mass., detective Lenore Thomas is teamed with a Chinese linguist as part of a police task force tracking down the makers and dealers of a new drug that induces murderous rage. Another detective, the mayor's mistress, is told to give inside info on the force's progress to her lover. Lenore's twin brother, Ike, a mailman, starts to find grisly objects in an unused P.O. box. As Lenore closes in on Cortez, boss of the city's tenderloin, she and the linguist begin a torrid affair. There's some wonderful local color, a large and varied cast of characters, some gore, a little steamy sex and a bloody climax. Unfortunately there are also a few improbable events (Ike's plain-Jane boss submitting sexually to a drug lord who calls himself the Paraclete), a tendency to pretension (Lenore: "Memory has never brought you comfort?" Cortez: "Not that I recall") and the Paraclete's not very surprising identity. But there's also real talent here. O'Connell's a definite discovery. BOMC alternate.
Copyright 1991 Reed Business Information, Inc.

The winner of Mysterious Press's first ``Mysterious Discovery'' contest introduces Lt. Lenore Thomas, of Quinsigamond, Mass., whose undercover duties in drug-infested Bangkok Park are interrupted by news of Lingo, a powerful new drug that acts on the brain's language centers with the effect of ``speed, Spanish fly, and a Berlitz course''--and also reduces its consumers to psychotic rage. While Lenore is following the tracks of Lingo--together with linguist- neuropsychologist Dr. Frederick Woo--her depressive twin brother Ike, a postal clerk, is faced with a mystery of his own: Who's sending a series of grisly packages--a dead fish, a bundle of severed fingers-- to unrented Box 9 at his substation? Though both twins find unlikely romance (Lenore with Woo, of course, Ike with supervisor Eva Barnes), their story is clearly heading for a powerfully fatalistic climax. Strong stuff, all right: O'Connell gets so deep inside his small- town cast that it's a relief to turn the last page. -- Copyright ©1991, Kirkus Associates, LP. All rights reserved.