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The second Casey procedural finds London's Detective Constable Maeve Kerrigan assigned to old-school Detective Inspector Josh Derwent, who thinks that women on the job should just use their charm to extract information and, when they can't do that, they should shut up and stay out of the way. Maeve soon discovers that Derwent will go so far as to shove her aside, even if he concusses her - in the name of "protecting her" - if she attempts to do her job in his presence. Once again, Maeve has to spend much of her energy deciding who the bad guys really are. In THE RECKONING, Kerrigan and Derwent have been assigned to catch the murderers of three pedophiles, who have been tortured and killed in gruesome ways that make it clear that their executioners were aware of the exact details of their preys' offenses. Most of the homicide squad thinks Kerrigan and Derwent should move as slowly as possible and let the killer wipe out as many perverts as possible, but Maeve doesn't believe in vigilante justice or going over to the dark side of the police force either. After they catch the killers in the act of torturing a fourth victim, Derwent recognizes a major mob figure and wonders why he would stoop to this type of reckoning - that is, bringing such obscure lowlifes to account. It turns out that his teenaged daughter, Cheyenne, has been at parties in the vicinity of these victims' homes, and the mobster assumes that a child molester has kidnapped her. As in the previous novel (THE BURNING), this news sends Maeve on a second crime investigation to find Cheyenne, even though her father is as repulsive as the men he has killed. Along the way, she will have to interview the mobster's associates and rivals, as well as organizers of "pop up" club scenes, who create ad hoc parties in empty warehouses. One of the Casey's strength's is that she enriches her procedural with a number of minor but interesting characters, detailed settings, varied themes, and personal developments. For instance, corruption within the police department impacts both investigations. Maeve and Rob's relationship, which began in THE BURNING, develops in an uneven fashion. They have many issues to work out, which makes the situation more realistic. Some weaknesses from the previous novel persist. Here, Maeve is the sole narrator for about three-quarters of the story; suddenly, Rob is the co-narrator. Casey needs to write in the third person or find some less jarring way to tell the story in the first person. Some of the characters, like Derwent and Godley, are oh-so-cardboard. Finally, when a teen daughter disappears, a father's first assumption is not that pedophiles (especially those who specialize in young boys) are going to know where she is. As with THE BURNING, Coomes does a superb job with the characters. She is starting to feel at home here, transitioning quite seamlessly between Maeve and Rob in conversations. She provides Derwent with a fine, cold edge. She covers the many accents of London's communities with ease. She has already become the cardinal voice of this series, one that listeners are going to look forward to hearing as each title emerges. The speed with which the Kerrigan procedurals have appeared suggests that they might have been turned in to the publisher at the same time and then released with a bit of spacing. Casey has a lot of talent and hopefully can maintain the momentum of this series and get more editorial assistance. Though THE RECKONING is not so good as The Burning, it is still a better listen than most, with lots of action and a strong central character. I'm still rooting for Maeve—and Casey. § Karla Jay is a legally blind audio book addict, who lives in New York City, where she is Distinguished Professor of English and Women's Studies at Pace University.
Reviewed by Karla Jay, October 2012
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