Dust to Dust

From Barnes & Noble

Our Review
Good Cops, Bad Cops
Bestselling author Tami Hoag brings us an intense blend of character study and pure, page-turning suspense in her tenth book, Dust to Dust. Here, Hoag returns to the setting of her previous novel, Ashes to Ashes, and brings all her skills for creating compelling plots to the fore, fusing them into a fast-paced thriller that will both fascinate and horrify readers. Dust to Dust manages to transcend the mystery, police procedural, and serial killer genres, taking the best from those fields and surpassing them.

When young, gay Internal Affairs officer Andy Fallon is found hanged with the single word "Sorry" scrawled across a mirror, Minneapolis detective Sam Kovac and his partner, Nikki Liska, are assigned to investigate the high-profile incident. However, they soon learn that the brass wants the case closed immediately and tagged as a suicide. Of course, this does nothing but fire up the duo's suspicions, and no matter who they have to go against, even inside their own department, they intend to hunt down the truth.

Kovac and Liska soon learn that Fallon was not only about to come out of the closet but was also investigating the murder of another gay police officer. Kovac and Liska receive threats to lay off the case, which only fuels their resolution further. To complicate matters even more, Andy's father, legendary cop Iron Mike Fallon, is also found dead; official cause of death: suicide. Even though Iron Mike wound up living his last years as a drunk and a cripple, Kovac idolized the man and knows that Mike never would've taken his own life. Now Kovac's out to bulldoze his way through the blue wall of silence and take down whoever he has to in order to even the score.

Known mostly for her romantic novels, Hoag displays her complete understanding of police procedural plotlines; the story is turned on its end several times as the detectives weave through a case involving several of their own. It's to Hoag's credit that she allows her tale to unfold slowly, introducing us to all the main characters, and giving us time to learn something about them and their private circumstances. Readers enter the lives of all involved, seeing how they interact as the complexities of the plot coil together. Hoag's prose is sleek and fluid, generating high amounts of tension as Kovac and Liska face one frustrating barrier after another. The exposition is kept to a minimum as we're drawn into the entwined history of our protagonists and villains.

Dust to Dust is a provocative and commanding novel; an impressive mix of action, psychological suspense, and investigative details keeps the narrative moving along briskly. The characters are so fully fleshed that we come to care for them in all their crisis situations and heartache. Writing with great emotional vividness, Hoag carries the reader along through poignancy, terror, and fortitude. We learn what it means to be a clean cop and what it means to be a so-called dirty one, the two sides of a snarled fraternal order that society can't do without. Dust to Dust is a significant novel that doesn't shy from the ugliness of personal and cultural corruption, with the precise amount of audacity that breaks the mold and creates a fresh style of penetrating storytelling.

--Tom Piccirilli

Susan Haas

Dust to Dust is a true turn-of-the-century tale. Gay-bashing and true crime television. Powerful women and political correctness. References to Minnesota's wrestler turned-governor, cracks about Dateline and South Park, designer coffee, Rohypnol and drag queens. In the end, it comes down to whether Fallon was killed despite the fact that his father was a hero, or because of it. The story is compelling an expertly told. Plot lines smoker and ignite as the suspense builds.

And at the end, Hoag's rapid-fire scene switches tease you with bits of the answer at one end before flashing to the other end and different resolutions. The result leaves Kovac, Liska and the reader scorched.
— USA Today

Publishers Weekly

Though she began as a romance writer, Hoag A Thin Dark Line; Guilty As Sin; etc. has found commercial success in several crime subgenres. Here she tries her hand at the police procedural, and though her story and characters are mostly the stock-in-trade of cop-house fiction, Hoag's verve lets her pull something fresh from the musty old squad room. The nude body of Andy Fallon, a gay Internal Affairs officer with the Minneapolis Police Department, is found hanging from a beam in his bedroom. It looks like a simple suicide, but detectives Sam Kovac and Nikki Liska have doubts, fueled in part by the desire of police brass to forget about the death as quickly as possible. Fallon is the son of department hero Iron Mike Fallon, a paraplegic since his shoot-out with a cop killer 20 years ago. On the day of his son's funeral, Iron Mike kills himself; at least that's how it looks. But as Kovac and Liska begin to realize, it's likely that someone killed the Fallon men--someone willing to eliminate anyone else brave enough to pursue the case. As the tough-talking detectives approach the killer, Hoag lays out a juicy assortment of suspects and subplots. There's Andy Fallon's closeted longtime lover; his seedy brother; a sexy disturbed teen; the Hennepin County prosecutors' office; a cadre of gay-bashing cops; the sultry, haunted female head of Internal Affairs; and a publicity-hungry police captain with his own TV show. Hoag does a fine job of hiding the keys until just the right moment, when all the mysteries come neatly together. The weary Kovac and the ball-busting Liska are all-too-familiar types, yet Hoag renders them so crisply they're not only tolerable but engaging. Both detectives had secondary roles in Hoag's 1999 Ashes to Ashes; they play well on center stage. Aug. Copyright 2000 Cahners Business Information.

Library Journal

Andy Fallon, a gay Minneapolis police officer, hangs dead in his bedroom. A week later Iron Mike Fallon, a former cop and Andy's father, shoots himself with his service revolver. Detectives Nikki Liska and Sam Kovac are not happy with the suspicious circumstances and the too-swift closing of both cases. They continue to nose around, causing unexpected people to react to their search with panic, threats, and attempted murder. What is the secret behind these deaths, and how are all the people connected? Hoag's story is well told; revelations come slowly and tantalizingly, and the characters are well drawn. Toward the end of the tale, explanation and detail are ignored to some extent in favor of suspense and action, but this does not detract from the overall quality of the book. Nick Sullivan reads with versatility and feeling. Recommended for all collections. Joanna M. Burkhardt, Univ. of Rhode Island Coll. of Continuing Education Lib., Providence Copyright 2001 Cahners Business Information.

Pam Lambert

With the same sleight of hand displayed in last year's Ashes to Ashes, Hoag sets her sharply drawn characters on a harrowing journey...her wintry tale of crime and punishment packs a powerful punch...killer suspense.
—People Magazine

Kirkus Reviews

A gay cop is found hanged. Was it suicide, murder, or kinky sex gone wrong? Street-smart Minneapolis police detectives Sam Kovac and Nikki Liska, back on the beat after Ashes to Ashes (1999), learn a lot about autoerotic asphyxiation while trying to crack the case. Sam and Nikki remain tough but likable protagonists as they investigate a long list of possible suspects: the victim's alcoholic father, a partially paralyzed cop; a jealous older brother with a taste for violence; a mysterious blond socialite of amazing strength; a hero cop turned crime-show host; and so on. But the detectives also view a home video unwittingly left to posterity by a hapless devotee of self-stimulation through suffocation that suggests the possibility of accidental death. (The author points out, somewhat in the style of a public-service announcement, that many teenage suicides by hanging may well be experimentation of this kind gone tragically wrong.) Unlike the sadistic sexual practices on display in Ashes to Ashes, this particular perversion is more pathetic than titillating, although Hoag tries hard to crank up the suspense. Energetic, down-to-earth prose and realistically gritty dialogue help push the workmanlike plot to its complex conclusion, but a notepad and pencil may come in handy to remember who shot whom, when, and why. Unfortunately, the author has chosen to write about a milieu with which she is clearly unfamiliar: urban gay life (here, exclusively male). Not wanting to offend or get too far into the seamier side of gay culture, Hoag settles for bland political correctness and a balanced ratio of 50 percent good gay guys to 50 percent bad gay guys. In dramatic terms, they cancel eachotherout, and none of them is particularly believable. For all the double-crosses, dire threats, and crashing around with guns, the story just isn't thrilling or chilling. But it does move—and fast. Clear directions, but don't try the rope trick at home.

From the Publisher

“Tami Hoag is the queen of the crime story.”—New York Post

“[Tami Hoag] demonstrates just why she has become one of the hottest names in the suspense game....Bottom line: Leaves competition in the dust.”—People