The promising first installment in a new series, this book is so good it has you wondering who should play Fiona on the big...
Introducing Fiona "Fi" Griffiths, a young Welsh police detective with a difference. She's in recovery from a rare dissociative condition that, at its worse, makes her feel as dead as the prostitutes whose murders she is investigating.
Five years ago, in her late teens, Fi had a prolonged breakdown. Now, she relates to people and experiences herself in strange ways. She's able to identify emotion, but not feel it. But that only enhances her go-getter investigative skills. Her willingness to break rules puts her at odds with her kindly superiors in Cardiff—until the truths she uncovers lead to breaks in the case. She quickly connects the murder of a prostitute and her six-year-old daughter to a sex-trade ring run by a British millionaire that brings in Russian prostitutes, hooks them on heroin, enslaves them and snuffs them when they have outlived their usefulness. The plot is a good one, the climax in a remote lighthouse better than good. But what sets the book apart is the first-person narration of Fi, one of the most intriguing female characters in recent fiction. Even Lisbeth Salander wouldn't spend the night in a morgue lying between dead bodies in an effort to get closer to their killers. After getting viciously slapped by a former cop gone bad, Fi is stricken with fear. Not only does she overcome it, she comes to appreciate her attacker's better qualities. A budding romance with a sensitive and caring fellow cop helps.
The promising first installment in a new series, this book is so good it has you wondering who should play Fiona on the big screen. How about Keira Knightley?Pub Date: Sept. 25, 2012
ISBN: 978-0-345-53373-9
Page Count: 352
Publisher: Delacorte
Review Posted Online: Aug. 3, 2012
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 15, 2012
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
Short chapters, paragraphs, and sentences; stilted dialogue; facile plotting; a few feeble passes at description: a...
Schematic and pedestrian, Patterson’s latest (after The Beach House, p. 519) pits Alex Cross against a trio of serial killers.
If only Alex Cross (last seen in Violets Are Blue, 200l) could retire from the Washington Police Force, as he wants to when he first appears here, having breakfast with his family. Alas, Cross’s friend John Sampson entreats the detective to take one more case, and a desultory pursuit ensues. Sampson believes the conviction of his friend, ’Nam vet Ellis Cooper, for the brutal murder of three women resulted from a frame-up. Patterson’s quick (what else?) crosscut to the killers bears Sampson out. Calling themselves “the three blind mice,” the men are hired killers unaware of the identity and motives of their employer, who, presumably, is the fourth mouse of the title. With “the clock for Ellis Cooper . . . ticking so loud,” Cross and Sampson search in vain for evidence to clear him before he is executed. The Army’s indifference to evidence that clears Cooper and points to other suspects bluntly suggests a cover-up. Then, crimes similar to the ones Copper allegedly committed follow: the three killers slaughter their victims, paint them red, and leave a straw doll at the scene of the carnage. E-mails from someone called “Foot Soldier” lead Cross to the solution, which, as Patterson makes obvious, stems from atrocities the military committed in Vietnam. Some feel-good domestic scenes (Cross’s grandma survives heart surgery) and a few hackneyed romantic interludes for Cross and Sampson break up the chase. At the closeout, the killers dispatched, Cross is planning to go to work for the FBI, suggesting a new tack for the series.
Short chapters, paragraphs, and sentences; stilted dialogue; facile plotting; a few feeble passes at description: a Patterson blue-plate special.Pub Date: Nov. 18, 2002
ISBN: 0-316-69300-6
Page Count: 28
Publisher: Little, Brown
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 1, 2002
More of a western than a mystery, like most of Joe’s adventures, and all the better for the open physical clashes that...
Wyoming Game and Fish Warden Joe Pickett (Free Fire, 2007, etc.), once again at the governor’s behest, stalks the wraithlike figure who’s targeting elk hunters for death.
Frank Urman was taken down by a single rifle shot, field-dressed, beheaded and hung upside-down to bleed out. (You won’t believe where his head eventually turns up.) The poker chip found near his body confirms that he’s the third victim of the Wolverine, a killer whose animus against hunters is evidently being whipped up by anti-hunting activist Klamath Moore. The potential effects on the state’s hunting revenues are so calamitous that Governor Spencer Rulon pulls out all the stops, and Pickett is forced to work directly with Wyoming Game and Fish Director Randy Pope, the boss who fired him from his regular job in Saddlestring District. Three more victims will die in rapid succession before Joe is given a more congenial colleague: Nate Romanowski, the outlaw falconer who pledged to protect Joe’s family before he was taken into federal custody. As usual in this acclaimed series, the mystery is slight and its solution eminently guessable long before it’s confirmed by testimony from an unlikely source. But the people and scenes and enduring conflicts that lead up to that solution will stick with you for a long time.
More of a western than a mystery, like most of Joe’s adventures, and all the better for the open physical clashes that periodically release the tension between the scheming adversaries.Pub Date: May 20, 2008
ISBN: 978-0-399-15488-1
Page Count: 320
Publisher: Putnam
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 15, 2008
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