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Counterfeit Road
Counterfeit Road
DI Ben Raveneau Series, Book 2
by Kirk Russell
Twenty-two years to the day, a videotape of an unsolved 1989 murder arrives at the San Francisco Homicide Detail. So starts Counterfeit Road, second of the series and San Francisco homicide inspector Ben Raveneau's toughest cold case. The victim, Alan Krueger, a former Secret Service agent, carried in his coat sixty-one hundred dollar bills. In 1989, the Secret Service inspected the bills and called them legitimate. They take another look now and say, counterfeit. But there's more. There's a link to the present they don't want to talk much about. Raveneau studies the videotape. He pores over the old case files. He hunts for the couple who reported Krueger's body and enlists the help of a retired homicide inspector. When a young man steps forward with yellowed photos the investigation moves to Hawaii. What made little sense, makes more as Raveneau turns misaligned pieces and realizes something darker is rapidly evolving. But who can he convince? If no one listens, can he, his partner, and one FBI agent stop the attack from happening?
Twenty-two years to the day, a videotape of an unsolved 1989 murder arrives at the San Francisco Homicide Detail. So starts Counterfeit Road, second of the series and San Francisco homicide inspector Ben Raveneau's toughest cold case. The victim, Alan Krueger, a former Secret Service agent, carried in his coat sixty-one hundred dollar bills. In 1989, the Secret Service inspected the bills and called them legitimate. They take another look now and say, counterfeit. But there's more. There's a link to the present they don't want to talk much about. Raveneau studies the videotape. He pores over the old case files. He hunts for the couple who reported Krueger's body and enlists the help of a retired homicide inspector. When a young man steps forward with yellowed photos the investigation moves to Hawaii. What made little sense, makes more as Raveneau turns misaligned pieces and realizes something darker is rapidly evolving. But who can he convince? If no one listens, can he, his partner, and one FBI agent stop the attack from happening?
Reviews-
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April 2, 2012
At the start of Russell’s solid second Ben Raveneau mystery (after 2011’s A Killing in China Basin), the cold case detective views a video sent to him with no explanation showing the murder of Alan Krueger in 1989, 22 years to the day earlier, in a parking lot by San Francisco Bay. Someone shot Krueger, a former Secret Service agent and an expert in counterfeiting, but didn’t take the 61 new $100 bills he was carrying. When Raveneau touches base with the Secret Service, he learns that the bills have since been determined to be counterfeit and possibly linked to a long-planned assassination attempt. The faint trail Raveneau follows lands him on the fringes of a current FBI and Secret Service investigation involving the purchase of weapons grade explosives with the same series of counterfeit bills. Russell smoothly blends mystery and thriller elements as the action builds to its satisfying climax. Agent: Philip Spitzer, Philip G. Spitzer Literary Agency. -
May 15, 2012
The coldest of cold cases meets the hottest of hot-button crimes for San Francisco's Inspector Ben Raveneau (A Killing in China Basin, 2011). Twenty-two years ago the San Francisco Police Department took $6,100 in $100 bills from the body of Alan Krueger, a counterfeiting expert who'd left the U.S. Secret Service and gone independent. After running a check on the currency, the FBI pronounced it genuine. Now Nate Brooks, the Assistant Special Agent in Charge of San Francisco, announces that the agency has changed its mind and decided the bills were the first of a new generation of superior fakes, limited by their serial numbers to a worrisome recent shipment of armaments. The Bureau's about-face couldn't be more timely for Ben Raveneau, of the Cold Case Unit, since he's just received a videotape of Krueger's murder that would have required him to reopen the case anyway. Before he's made any real progress, however, there's a development as unexpected as it seems unrelated: Three people are brutally murdered at David Khan's cabinet factory minutes after a routine delivery of plywood. John Drury, the truck driver who delivered the shipment, is truculent and uncooperative, but does that make him a killer? And what's the relation between the ancient Krueger case, the new eruption of violence and the president's upcoming visit to San Francisco? Dodging questions about why he's working a cold case when there's so much at stake in the volatile present, Raveneau connects the dots methodically and convincingly, though with little sense of urgency.COPYRIGHT(2012) Kirkus Reviews, ALL RIGHTS RESERVED.
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Starred review from June 1, 2012
Ben Raveneau, an expert on cold cases for the San Francisco police department, ponders a 22-year-old video he's just received that documents the shooting death of a former Secret Service agent. Alan Krueger had been a counterfeit expert, and the bills he was carrying the day he died have the same series run as money used in 2011 to buy explosives. Raveneau learns that Krueger had connections to a group of Vietnam vets who hunkered down in Hawaii after the war. In the present day, a horrifying shooting at a San Francisco business results in four deaths. There, Raveneau finds bomb-making materials and his colleague discovers a safe full of cash. Shockingly, the money corresponds to the cold case. Every minute counts when Raveneau figures out how the veterans in Hawaii connect with a bomb-making plot set very much in the present. VERDICT Russell has crafted an addictive police procedural on speed, with requisite intricate plotting and a stunning conclusion. It's all in the details, which Russell manages to juggle adeptly. If you've missed Russell in the past, grab the first title in the series (A Killing in China Basin), too. [See Prepub Alert, 3/21/12.]
Copyright 2012 Library Journal, LLC Used with permission.
