Two protagonists from Johansen’s earlier thrillers go rogue (Close Your Eyes, 2012, etc.).
Sigmund Freud would have had a field day studying Eve Duncan, a perennial leading lady in Johansen’s literary world. The long-suffering forensic sculptor not only comes from a dysfunctional family, she talks to the ghost of her dead daughter and has nightmares about people she doesn’t know. But you can be sure that she’ll be meeting the subjects of her dreams soon in the prolific author’s latest offering, which centers around a murder attempt and the disappearance of Beth Avery from a California mental facility. Beth, it seems, is Sandra Duncan’s oldest daughter, which makes her Eve’s half sister, a complication that’s par for the course in Johansen’s complicated world. Beth’s dad is the son of the politically prominent Avery family, and Sandra was forced to give up her parental rights at Beth’s birth. Beth was hidden in boarding schools until she suffered a mysterious head injury and was institutionalized, and Sandra’s tried to keep tabs on her through a private investigator. After she learns of Beth’s disappearance, Sandra turns to Eve and Atlanta PD detective Joe Quinn for help. They drop everything and head to Santa Barbara, where Eve convinces Dr. Kendra Michaels, a music therapist who possesses heightened senses, to assist them. The two women gain entry into the hospital and enlist the help of Kendra’s friend, a computer hacker so brilliant that the Pentagon used him in some unknown capacity to foil the Chinese. Gaining access to private files, Eve, Joe and a helpful intern who’s been planted in the hospital by his uncle, the PI, discover all sorts of sinister details about Beth’s treatment, the employees at the hospital, the Avery family’s dark past and Drogan, the man who’s been hired to kill Beth. And as Eve gets to know her naïve sister and does her best to protect her, she becomes Drogan’s primary target.
Johansen throws in enough crooked characters to house an entire prison in a plot that starts out with promise but ends up being a snoozer.
