Nasaw’s overriding interest is an impressive body count, but even nine corpses can’t guarantee thrills.
The sequel to The Girls He Adored (2001) uses multiple personality disorder as a come-on for a Jekyll and Hyde horror story.
There is good news and bad news about Ulysses Maxwell, the serial killer of the earlier novel. The good news is that his Dissociative Identity Disorder (DID) has been brought under control by Dr. Corder, his therapist at a psychiatric institute in Oregon; evil Max has been replaced by sweet Lyssy. The bad news, unknown to Corder, is that Max is still lurking in Lyssy’s psyche. The latest arrival at the institute is another DID patient, gentle Lily, a young woman who acquired Lilith, an alter (alternate identity), while being raped by a biker; fierce Lilith bit off his nose. The rehabilitated Maxwell is facing trial for 12 murders; under the stress, Max surfaces and makes contact with Lilith, who wants to escape. Nasaw sets the stage for a massacre, which occurs when Corder invites the two patients into his family home. In walk two Jekylls, out walk two Hydes, having slashed to death Corder, his wife and their two escorts. This is gut-level exciting because another couple, Lily’s former shrink Dr. Irene Cogan and retired FBI agent E.L. Pender, try and fail to prevent the tragedy. The trouble is, Nasaw peaked too soon; we’re not yet at the midpoint, and nothing will top that massacre. The killers flee to the California hideout of two notorious drug dealers, Carson and Mama Rose; the latter had rescued Lily from the biker. There will be more mayhem before Lily/Lilith and Lyssy/Max move to a cabin in the woods and the inevitable confrontation with Cogan and Pender. Nasaw tries to keep things interesting with constant alter switches, but they just become distracting. As Pender says, “you can’t tell the players without a scorecard.”
Nasaw’s overriding interest is an impressive body count, but even nine corpses can’t guarantee thrills.Pub Date: Sept. 1, 2007
ISBN: 978-1-4165-3416-7
Page Count: 304
Publisher: Atria
Review Posted Online: June 24, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 15, 2007
A tepid follow-up to The Camel Club (2005), with few surprises.
Helped by a beautiful grifter, the “Camel Club”—the four-man band of conspiracy theorists—returns to battle a threat to national security.
Annabelle Conroy is con-artist extraordinaire; Jerry Bagger, mobster and mark; and Roger Seagraves, master assassin. All come straight from central casting. Seagraves is killing high-level government officials, and Conroy is putting together the con of the century, with Bagger as the target. The mysterious death of a rare-books expert at the Library of Congress launches the story, which splits off at first into two different plotlines. In one, Conroy and her team work their way up to their major score. In the other, the Camel Club investigates the mysterious death of a close friend. Things are slightly more exciting in Conroy’s world. She’s assembling her team, eager to settle an old score by taking down Atlantic City’s most notorious and ruthless casino owner. After a series of capers out west to build their bankroll, the team heads back east. There’s little drama Players act out their part; marks fall. The big score comes off without a hitch. The two plots intersect halfway through. Annabelle arrives in D.C., thanks to an awkward development, along with a new piece of unfinished business. Seagraves and the Camel Club are engaged in a cat-and-mouse game, and Annabelle Conroy is the special guest star. The merged stories reach a predictable conclusion. An obvious conflict remains unresolved for much of the way, setting up the next chapter in the saga.
A tepid follow-up to The Camel Club (2005), with few surprises.Pub Date: Oct. 17, 2006
ISBN: 0-446-53109-X
Page Count: 448
Publisher: N/A
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 15, 2006
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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