The dilemmas of two good women struggling in very different ways to do the right thing creates suffocating suspense.
Detective Geena Brassard of the Pennsylvania State Police takes on a case that involves the most heinous springtime ritual imaginable.
Everyone in and around Bangor is unnerved when the body of legal secretary/college student Valerie Brown is pulled from Minsi Lake because she’s the third young woman who has been discovered raped and strangled at the rate of one a year. Geena is even more disturbed than everyone else because she knows that Valerie’s not the third victim but at least the fourth. Seven years ago, Janey Montgomery was attacked in a remarkably similar way but somehow survived to be interviewed by Detective Albert Eugenis, Geena’s partner and mentor. Geena pries Janey’s name out of Albert, since retired, who swears her to secrecy, and shares it with her current partner, Detective Parker Reed, whom she swears to secrecy. It doesn’t matter. Rumor swiftly spreads Janey’s name and secret far and wide. Reporters descend on her like vultures to ask, “How do you feel about being the only surviving victim of the Spring Strangler?” Janey’s psychologist, Dr. Helen Watson, begins to press her in uncomfortable ways. Fellow students and their parents lodge mounting complaints against her son, 6-year-old Christian, who’s always been difficult and may be graduating to violence. Could that be because he’s the child of Janey’s rapist, who’s graduated to serial murder?
The dilemmas of two good women struggling in very different ways to do the right thing creates suffocating suspense.Pub Date: June 16, 2020
ISBN: 978-1-5420-9324-8
Page Count: 320
Publisher: Thomas & Mercer
Review Posted Online: March 28, 2020
Kirkus Reviews Issue: April 15, 2020
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
A roller-coaster ride full of unexpected twists and turns.
An unlikely ensemble recounts the devious events that led to a grisly Halloween murder.
Simon Dobias is a Chicago law professor vying for tenure. He’s been contentedly, if not happily, married to his wife, Vicky, a social worker at Safe Haven, for nearly a decade. He’s also reignited an affair with a beautiful woman from his distant past after a chance meeting outside of Bloomingdale’s on Michigan Avenue. What begins with matching burner phones and clandestine meetings ends with a Grim Reaper costume and the brutal slaying of Simon’s lover. But whatever else you think you know in this twisty, intricately plotted story is likely wrong. As narrated by Simon, the obvious murder suspect; the equally unscrupulous Vicky; and Sgt. Jane Burke, the Grace Village officer charged with solving the upscale suburb’s first homicide—and at least one surprise narrator—we learn about Simon’s relationship with ill-fated bombshell Lauren Betancourt, the circumstances surrounding her death, and the subsequent criminal investigation. Murder is far from the only crime committed among this shady lot, though, or even the most recent; the full extent of these devious characters’ various schemes and revenge plots is revealed in carefully scattered clues leading to a shocking, if somewhat improbable, conclusion. Even seasoned mystery readers won’t be able to predict all the knots in Simon and Vicky’s tangled web of deception.
A roller-coaster ride full of unexpected twists and turns.Pub Date: July 5, 2022
ISBN: 978-0-399-17092-8
Page Count: 464
Publisher: Putnam
Review Posted Online: April 12, 2022
Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 1, 2022
This superb series (The Dark Angel, 2018, etc.) never disappoints. Its patented combination of mysterious circumstances,...
An anonymous letter brings DCI Harry Nelson memories of past sorrows and present dangers.
The letter mentions a stone circle that harks back to the 20-year-old case of a missing child. Ten years later, another missing child introduced Harry to archaeologist Ruth Galloway when he asked her to examine some bones. That case began a working relationship that turned out to be equally productive in personal terms: A short-lived affair between the two produced a child, Kate, though Harry is married and has two grown daughters. His wife, Michelle, who accepts Kate in their lives, is about to give birth to a baby who may or may not be Harry’s. A new archaeological team working near the site of the original henge finds a stone coffin containing bones. The head of the dig is Leif Anderssen, whose father, Erik, was Ruth’s mentor all those years ago. As Harry continues to receive cryptic messages, the bones of what Ruth thinks is a young girl are found near the new dig, opening up yet another old case. The police think the body is that of Margaret Lacey, who vanished from a street party in 1981. The focus at the time was on her parents; her older siblings, Annie and Luke; and John Mostyn, a neighbor and odd duck who collected stones. But nothing was ever proven, and Margaret’s body was never found. The birth of George, Michelle’s son, puts more pressure on Harry, who loves his wife and Ruth in different ways, to stay in his marriage. Nelson’s team and some friends of Ruth’s use their own areas of expertise to search for clues from the past, but when the child of Annie’s daughter, Star, is kidnapped, the present-day crisis takes center stage.
This superb series (The Dark Angel, 2018, etc.) never disappoints. Its patented combination of mysterious circumstances, police procedure, and agonizing relationship problems will keep you reading, and feeling, all night.Pub Date: May 7, 2019
ISBN: 978-1-328-97464-8
Page Count: 368
Publisher: Houghton Mifflin Harcourt
Review Posted Online: Feb. 17, 2019
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 1, 2019
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