Robb knows her audience will be highly sympathetic to a police heroine who has to walk a crime scene in uncomfortably...
The winter of 2061 finds New York still with no cure for blizzards, or for serial felonies.
Both the forensic evidence and the testimony of Daphne Strazza—whom Lt. Eve Dallas (Apprentice in Death, 2016, etc.) runs into, wandering the streets naked and dazed, while Eve’s on her way home from a charity ball—indicate that the attack that left Daphne’s husband, noted surgeon Anthony Strazza, dead was a home invasion following the Strazzas’ own party that went wrong when Dr. Strazza loosened the bonds that held him a helpless victim to his wife’s rape and launched himself at the invader. Looking closer, however, Eve realizes that the only way for the perp to have breached the Strazzas’ security was to arrive with the people of Jacko’s Caterers or the equipment suppliers of Loan Star Rentals. While Eve’s busy narrowing the field of suspects, her sidekick, Detective Amelia Peabody, is multiplying the victims. It seems that Rosa and Neville Patrick endured a remarkably similar home invasion six months ago, and Lori and Ira Brinkman another one in November. Now that the invader, who seems less interested in stealing valuables than in dressing in ghoulish costumes and humiliating his victims, has tasted blood, Eve is convinced he’ll turn up the heat, and so he does. Will Eve work her way through interviewing all the suspects and potential victims to confront the killer before the first robin of spring?
Robb knows her audience will be highly sympathetic to a police heroine who has to walk a crime scene in uncomfortably fashionable stiletto heels, but along the winding trail to the easily spotted villain, she's not afraid to throw in some descriptions that will earn this installment an R for serious sexual violence.Pub Date: Feb. 7, 2017
ISBN: 978-1-250-12311-4
Page Count: 384
Publisher: St. Martin's
Review Posted Online: Nov. 21, 2016
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Dec. 1, 2016
Those not knowing King’s Dark Tower series or The Talisman will follow all this easily enough. Many admiring King’s recent,...
Coauthors King and Straub, together again (The Talisman, 1984), take a Wisconsin Death Trip into parallel universes.
The Fisherman, who copycats long-dead serial killer Albert Fish, has been chopping up little kids in French Landing, Wisconsin, and sending letters to the children’s parents identical to those Fish sent parents 67 years ago—letters never made public, so how does The Fisherman do this? The local police chief asks for help from Jack Sawyer (hero of The Talisman), a Los Angeles homicide detective now in retirement. As a child, Jack flipped into the Territories, the parallel world in The Talisman, but has since forgotten his trip. What about the all-black Black House in the woods? Well, only Charles Burnside (Alzheimer’s) and Tinky Winky Judy Marshall (just plain crazy) know the Black House is the doorway to Abbalah, the entrance to hell—and Judy’s son Tyler is apparently the killer’s fourth victim. Jack’s new buddy, blind Henry Leyden, a radio deejay with four discrete identities no one knows are his, can’t talk Jack into taking the case. But when little Irma Freneau’s gnawed foot arrives in a shoebox on Jack’s welcome mat, Jack flips and lands in the Territories. The Territories confer a sacred magic and, in Jack’s case, absolute luck that lets him win his every bet or endeavor. Tyler, it happens, is telekinetic, and has been abducted by the Crimson King. All universes are held in place by the Dark Tower, the great interdimensional axle the Crimson King wants to destroy. Jack must save Tyler from the furnace-lands below Black House—and here the novel strives for depth, though interest dwindles.
Those not knowing King’s Dark Tower series or The Talisman will follow all this easily enough. Many admiring King’s recent, subtler work, though, may find these blood-spattered pages a step backward into dreamslash & gutspill.Pub Date: Sept. 15, 2001
ISBN: 0-375-50439-7
Page Count: 640
Publisher: Random House
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 15, 2001
IN THE NEWS
The novel rewards the reader’s patience: There are complications, deliberations and a riveting resolution.
A mystery that is perfectly in tune with the times, as the ravages of the recession and the reach of the Internet complicate a murder that defies easy explanation within a seemingly loving household.
The Irish author continues to distinguish herself with this fourth novel, marked by psychological acuteness and thematic depth. As has previously been the case, a supporting character from a prior work (Faithful Place, 2010, her third and best) takes center stage, as Mick “Scorcher” Kennedy attempts to penetrate the mystery of what transpired during a night that left a husband and two children dead and a wife barely clinging to life, with injuries that couldn’t have been self-inflicted. Or could they? This is the most claustrophobic of French’s novels, because the secrets seemingly lie within that household and with those who were either murdered or attacked within it. The setting is an upscale property development at what had once been Broken Harbor, where Kennedy’s family had itself suffered a fatal trauma decades earlier. The property development has been left unfinished due to the economic downturn, which had also cost Patrick Spain his job. He and his wife, Jenny, had done their best to keep up appearances, with their marriage seemingly in harmony. Then came the attack that left Patrick and their two children dead and Jenny in intensive care. The investigative net cast by Kennedy and his younger partner encompasses Jenny’s sister and some of their longtime friends, but the focus remains on the insular family. Had Patrick gone insane? Had Jenny? Was this a horrific murder-suicide or had someone targeted a family that had no apparent enemies? Says Scorcher, “In every way there is, murder is chaos. Our job is simple, when you get down to it: we stand against that, for order.” Yet Scorcher’s own sanity, or at least his rigid notions of right and wrong, will fall into question in a novel that turns the conventional notions of criminals and victims topsy-turvy.
The novel rewards the reader’s patience: There are complications, deliberations and a riveting resolution.Pub Date: July 24, 2012
ISBN: 978-0-670-02365-3
Page Count: 464
Publisher: Viking
Review Posted Online: June 16, 2012
Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 1, 2012
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