Taut and fraught with surprise twists, Hillier’s thriller is addictive.
“Free Abby Maddox, 2/10.” Carved into the back of a murdered prostitute, these words resurrect a violent story that everyone thought had ended.
Picking up where Creep (2010) left off, the latest from Hillier reassembles a cast of characters facing the aftermath of serial killer Ethan Wolfe’s death. Dubbed the Tell Tale Heart killer, Wolfe had seduced and tortured psychology professor and recovering sex addict Sheila Tao. Now that Wolfe is dead and his girlfriend, Abby Maddox, has been incarcerated for attacking Detective Jerry Isaac, Sheila believes she can rebuild her life. Retired from the force and estranged from his wife, Jerry struggles to regain his confidence after Maddox’s attack. The scar she left on his throat is simply the physical manifestation of the scars within his psyche. Suddenly, the wary peace is shattered, and Jerry’s partner calls him back to help with a murder case. The corpse bears a strong resemblance to Maddox, and the killer has strangled her with a zip tie. The message carved into her back prophesies nine more victims. Who is willing to kill for Maddox’s freedom? Twists and turns reveal a website devoted to freeing Maddox, a trash bag full of fan letters to Maddox and a mysterious young man hiring prostitutes online. Jerry isn’t quite ready to cope with this case, particularly when the only leads seem to lie in Maddox’s hands. Even more strange, Maddox wants to talk to Sheila. Luckily, Jerry has a new intern, Danny. Studying to become a criminologist, Danny is, of course, intrigued by the case. Her fresh-faced interest, energy and technological skills rejuvenate Jerry’s hunt. Yet as the kill count mounts, he has to begin to wonder: Is someone orchestrating everyone’s every move? The second book in this series leaves readers hungry for the next.
Taut and fraught with surprise twists, Hillier’s thriller is addictive.Pub Date: Aug. 7, 2012
ISBN: 978-1-4516-6454-6
Page Count: 384
Publisher: Gallery Books/Simon & Schuster
Review Posted Online: July 21, 2012
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 1, 2012
Suspenseful, frightening, and sometimes poignant—provided the reader has a generously willing suspension of disbelief.
A man walks out of a bar and his life becomes a kaleidoscope of altered states in this science-fiction thriller.
Crouch opens on a family in a warm, resonant domestic moment with three well-developed characters. At home in Chicago’s Logan Square, Jason Dessen dices an onion while his wife, Daniela, sips wine and chats on the phone. Their son, Charlie, an appealing 15-year-old, sketches on a pad. Still, an undertone of regret hovers over the couple, a preoccupation with roads not taken, a theme the book will literally explore, in multifarious ways. To start, both Jason and Daniela abandoned careers that might have soared, Jason as a physicist, Daniela as an artist. When Charlie was born, he suffered a major illness. Jason was forced to abandon promising research to teach undergraduates at a small college. Daniela turned from having gallery shows to teaching private art lessons to middle school students. On this bracing October evening, Jason visits a local bar to pay homage to Ryan Holder, a former college roommate who just received a major award for his work in neuroscience, an honor that rankles Jason, who, Ryan says, gave up on his career. Smarting from the comment, Jason suffers “a sucker punch” as he heads home that leaves him “standing on the precipice.” From behind Jason, a man with a “ghost white” face, “red, pursed lips," and "horrifying eyes” points a gun at Jason and forces him to drive an SUV, following preset navigational directions. At their destination, the abductor forces Jason to strip naked, beats him, then leads him into a vast, abandoned power plant. Here, Jason meets men and women who insist they want to help him. Attempting to escape, Jason opens a door that leads him into a series of dark, strange, yet eerily familiar encounters that sometimes strain credibility, especially in the tale's final moments.
Suspenseful, frightening, and sometimes poignant—provided the reader has a generously willing suspension of disbelief.Pub Date: July 26, 2016
ISBN: 978-1-101-90422-0
Page Count: 352
Publisher: Crown
Review Posted Online: May 3, 2016
Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 15, 2016
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BOOK TO SCREEN
Slaughter (Cop Town, 2014, etc.) is so uncompromising in following her blood trails to the darkest places imaginable that...
Twenty-four years after a traumatic disappearance tore a Georgia family apart, Slaughter’s scorching stand-alone picks them up and shreds them all over again.
The Carrolls have never been the same since 19-year-old Julia vanished. After years of fruitlessly pestering the police, her veterinarian father, Sam, killed himself; her librarian mother, Helen, still keeps the girl's bedroom untouched, just in case. Julia’s sisters have been equally scarred. Lydia Delgado has sold herself for drugs countless times, though she’s been clean for years now; Claire Scott has just been paroled after knee-capping her tennis partner for a thoughtless remark. The evening that Claire’s ankle bracelet comes off, her architect husband, Paul, is callously murdered before her eyes and, without a moment's letup, she stumbles on a mountainous cache of snuff porn. Paul’s business partner, Adam Quinn, demands information from Claire and threatens her with dire consequences if she doesn’t deliver. The Dunwoody police prove as ineffectual as ever. FBI agent Fred Nolan is more suavely menacing than helpful. So Lydia and Claire, who’ve grown so far apart that they’re virtual strangers, are unwillingly thrown back on each other for help. Once she’s plunged you into this maelstrom, Slaughter shreds your own nerves along with those of the sisters, not simply by a parade of gruesome revelations—though she supplies them in abundance—but by peeling back layer after layer from beloved family members Claire and Lydia thought they knew. The results are harrowing.
Slaughter (Cop Town, 2014, etc.) is so uncompromising in following her blood trails to the darkest places imaginable that she makes most of her high-wire competition look pallid, formulaic, or just plain fake.Pub Date: Sept. 29, 2015
ISBN: 978-0-06-242905-6
Page Count: 400
Publisher: Morrow/HarperCollins
Review Posted Online: June 30, 2015
Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 15, 2015
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