The Numbers

December 5, 2022
Set three years before the events of 2008’s Unforeseen, Pirog’s rollicking sixth outing for Thomas Prescott (after 2021’s Jungle Up) takes 30-year-old Prescott, recently fired from the Seattle PD, to Philadelphia, where his college-age sister, Lacy, is burning up the water on Drexel University’s swim team, and the local police are stretched thin with anti-corporation protestors. Prescott confirms the death of one protestor, Brooke Wexley, a super-wealthy financier’s daughter found strangled inside her tent at a protest site. Soon afterward, the short-handed police captain of Philadelphia’s Ninth District asks Prescott to sign on as a consultant to catch a serial killer who’s murdered three people in the past two weeks, engraving a different set of three numbers on each victim’s forehead. Prescott’s intuition and instinct serve him well in his investigation of Brooke’s murder and the other killings, which involve a Mafia-run numbers racket. Prescott’s panache holds up through frat-house hijinks, police distrust, a demented hacker ex-girlfriend, and even Lacy’s MS diagnosis as the action builds to a shocking climax that turns everything he’s learned inside out. This fanciful, funny caper, the perfect starting point for newcomers, cries out for a TV adaptation. Agent: Danny Baror, Baror International.

February 1, 2023
A clever, funny prequel to the popular Thomas Prescott series, set in 2011. Independently wealthy Prescott is a brilliant investigator. When his maverick streak and quirky sense of humor get him bounced from the Seattle Police Department, he follows his beloved sister, Lacy, to Philadelphia, where she swims for Drexel and he consults with the city police. While hanging around an Occupy Wall Street demonstration, he finds Brooke Wexley, whose father is the richest man in town, dead in her tent, and his police connections set him on the trail of her killer. Along the way, he gets a call asking for help in a serial killer case. A string of dead men all have three-digit numbers carved in their foreheads. The members of the joint task force investigating the crimes think they're area codes, but Prescott disagrees. Too much of a loose cannon for the FBI, he investigates on his own and stumbles on stories about the Numbers Racket and dream books that assign three-digit numbers to dreams so people can use them to place bets. A visit to a fellow investigator's mother tells him all he wants to know about the Numbers and territorial fights over who runs them. Although Prescott isn't cleared to investigate, his theory proves correct, and the dream books lead him to Boston, where digging up a grave discloses still more bodies with numbers on their foreheads. After Prescott's saved from arrest for grave-robbing by FBI Special Agent Wade Gleason, the discovery gets them appointed to the joint task force even as he continues to work the Wexley case, often posing as a fun-loving frat boy. A nail-biting thriller larded with humor and social commentary.

COPYRIGHT(2023) Kirkus Reviews, ALL RIGHTS RESERVED.

March 15, 2023
Pirog's last Nicholas Prescott novel, Jungle Up (2021), had an unusual structuring device. The opening was about one thing--an old flame's frantic plea for help. Then, out of nowhere, it became about something else--a treasure hunt along the Amazon. He's at it again. Ex-cop Prescott is investigating the murder of a co-ed, the daughter of the richest man in Seattle, and then, suddenly, he's not. The police ask for Prescott's help in clearing up the slaughter of a few thugs, who are connected to an especially dodgy corner of the numbers racket. The numbers carved into their foreheads seem tied to numerology in dream books. Pirog explains this at great length, and readers may start to long for that dead co-ed. Still, Pirog's gifts as an action writer and a creator of sharp, quick prose save the day, even given the long sessions of beer pong, pickup basketball, and family history. Perhaps anxious readers should simply read this as it was written. What's the hurry? Slow down and enjoy another round of beer pong.

COPYRIGHT(2023) Booklist, ALL RIGHTS RESERVED.