Domestic drama à la Mary Higgins Clark, though without the brand names, played out in 115-degree weather. Can a special on...
Cochise County, Arizona, sheriff Joanna Brady (Devil’s Claw, 2000, etc.) and her new husband Butch Dixon are sneaking a weekend away when word arrives that her daughter Jenny, 12, and her friend Dora, who sneaked off themselves from their Girl Scout campsite for a cigarette, have discovered the nude, battered body of a woman. When Dora’s mother can’t be found, and her home turns out to be a meth factory, Deputy Frank Montoya arranges for the girls to stay with Joanna’s former in-laws. Jealous of the in-laws and disapproving of the trashy young Dora, Joanna’s busybody mom calls in Children’s Services, who put the youngster in foster care, but she flees—and then is brutally murdered. Is someone now after Jenny, too? A medic-alert bracelet identifies the dead woman as Constance Haskell, whose husband Ron cleaned out their bank account and signed himself in to Pathways to Paradise, a rehab for gamblers, where everyone from the gate guard to the owners is untherapeutically hostile. While Joanna soothes her daughter, calms her mother, finds time for her bridegroom, and covers the county with too few officers, an autopsy report indicates that Dora was pregnant, and the evidence leads to a doctor’s family in Phoenix. There’ll be another dead body, an unlikely confession, and a flying tackle at a Lexus dealership before Jenny swears off cigarettes forever, Joanna’s mom breaks down in tears for the first time ever, and Joanna and Butch can turn off the cell phone and snuggle.
Domestic drama à la Mary Higgins Clark, though without the brand names, played out in 115-degree weather. Can a special on Lifetime Network for Women be far behind?Pub Date: Sept. 1, 2001
ISBN: 0-380-97729-X
Page Count: 384
Publisher: Morrow/HarperCollins
Review Posted Online: June 24, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 15, 2001
Mystery, danger, and sexual tension abound in an action-packed thriller that breaks plenty of heads but no new ground.
Sparks fly as a woman with extraordinary abilities fights her attraction to a dangerous freelance consultant.
Dr. Kendra Michaels has worked with former FBI Agent Adam Lynch before (Double Blind, 2018), but she’s furious with him for getting her tossed out of Afghanistan after she sustained a minor wound while trying to root out corruption. Kendra, who was blind until an experimental operation restored her sight at 20, has highly developed senses of smell, hearing, and spatial awareness that she’s used to help the FBI and CIA in many difficult cases. Now, as she returns to the U.S., they have another one she can’t resist investigating. Elaine Wessler and Ronald Kim, both staff members at her old school, the Woodward Academy for the Physically Disabled in Oceanside, California, have been found murdered for no apparent reason, and FBI Special Agent Michael Griffin is anxious to use her skills and inside knowledge. Elaine had been fostering an unusual guide dog, Harley, who's had problems adjusting since the child he was working with was killed in a gas-main explosion. Now that Elaine is gone, his unearthly howls are upsetting the students. Kendra talks her best friend, Olivia, who’s blind, into sharing custody of Harley until they can find him the right home. Meanwhile, she turns up clues the FBI team missed and is rewarded for her efforts with a bomb planted in her car. It turns out to be fake, but it’s still a potent warning to walk away. Returning from Afghanistan to help Kendra, Lynch finds her still angry with him and intent on resisting his charms. Her friend Jessie Mercado, a private eye, turns up to help extricate her from a dangerous situation and sticks around to join the hunt for the killers. It will take all of them, including Harley, to solve the violent, complex case and get the school Kendra loves back on track.
Mystery, danger, and sexual tension abound in an action-packed thriller that breaks plenty of heads but no new ground.Pub Date: Jan. 7, 2020
ISBN: 978-1-5387-6292-9
Page Count: 368
Publisher: Grand Central Publishing
Review Posted Online: Oct. 13, 2019
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Nov. 1, 2019
As usual, Coben piles on the plot twists, false leads, violent set pieces and climactic surprises with the unfocused...
After six years of spinning jaw-dropping stand-alone thrillers, Coben brings back his sports agent—make that everything agent—Myron Bolitar (Darkest Fear, 2000, etc.) for an encore.
Overhearing high-school senior Erin Wilder, his current ladylove’s daughter, sharing confidences with her friend Aimee Biel about getting driven by wasted friends, Myron Bolitar promises both girls that if they ever need a ride, they can call him and he’ll pick them up, no questions asked. All too soon he gets a chance to deliver. Aimee phones him from midtown Manhattan, where he just happens to be staying, and asks him to drive her to suburban New Jersey. Myron obliges but pushes a bit too hard with the questions, and Aimee vanishes into a strange house. The next day she’s still missing, and in jig time the police, armed with Myron’s credit-card slips and EZ-Pass records, come calling. It turns out that Myron’s not a credible suspect. But because everybody connects Aimee’s disappearance to that of fellow student Katie Rochester three months ago, Myron’s on the hook with some serious people, from Aimee’s parents, who beg him to bring her home, to Katie’s mobbed-up dad, who’s too proud to beg but has other ways of getting him to cooperate.
As usual, Coben piles on the plot twists, false leads, violent set pieces and climactic surprises with the unfocused intensity that have made his thrillers (The Innocent, 2005, etc.) such a hot ticket.Pub Date: April 25, 2006
ISBN: 0-525-94949-6
Page Count: 384
Publisher: Dutton
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 15, 2006
BOOK TO SCREEN
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