Its graphic sex and violence will keep this sequel to The Rules (2013) off a lot of bookshelves. But it reveals the dark...
A private eye’s past comes back to haunt her.
At the tender age of 13, Ava Rome found her life changed abruptly for the worse when her career Army father vanished and was marked a deserter. Then her younger brother’s death in a bullying incident while she was supposed to be watching him left her suffering from guilt and nightmares. As a young MP stationed in California, Ava made an arrest that puts her in mortal danger now that she’s a PI in Hawaii. Norman Traxler, a psychopath who spent 15 years in San Quentin for assaulting a prostitute, has dreamed every day of killing Ava. Since she’s a sucker for defenseless people, Ava takes on the case of Jenny Mordan, another prostitute who's being harassed for sex by police officer Ron Nevez, a bad egg who’s involved with illegal drugs and pornography. Ava’s also drawn to Cassie Sands, the teenage daughter of a client who has little time to spend with her. When Cassie takes off, Ava finds her with pot grower Alvie Wong and is forced to hurt him to get Cassie back. Meanwhile, Traxler is slowly stepping up his harassment of Ava. He has no qualms about hurting her friends as a prelude to killing her. Instead of helping Ava, the police assign Nevez to the Traxler case. Neither Jenny nor Cassie is willing to listen to good advice, and they both become targets for Traxler, who really enjoys hurting women.
Its graphic sex and violence will keep this sequel to The Rules (2013) off a lot of bookshelves. But it reveals the dark underbelly of Hawaii and builds tension right up to the explosive conclusion.Pub Date: June 18, 2014
ISBN: 978-1-4328-2859-2
Page Count: 304
Publisher: Five Star/Gale Cengage
Review Posted Online: April 16, 2014
Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 1, 2014
An undisciplined but powerfully lacerating story, by an author who knows every block of the neighborhood and every hair on...
After five adventures for Boston shamus Patrick Kenzie and his off-again lover Angela Gennaro (Prayers for Rain, 1999, etc.), Lehane tries his hand at a crossover novel that’s as dark as any of Patrick’s cases.
Even the 1975 prologue is bleak. Sean Devine and Jimmy Marcus are playing, or fighting, outside Sean’s parents’ house in the Point neighborhood of East Buckingham when a car pulls up, one of the two men inside flashes a badge, and Sean and Jimmy’s friend Dave Boyle gets bundled inside, allegedly to be driven home to his mother for a scolding but actually to get kidnapped. Though Dave escapes after a few days, he never really outlives his ordeal, and 25 years later it’s Jimmy’s turn to join him in hell when his daughter Katie is shot and beaten to death in the wilds of Pen Park, and State Trooper Sean, just returned from suspension, gets assigned to the case. Sean knows that both Dave and Jimmy have been in more than their share of trouble in the past. And he’s got an especially close eye on Jimmy, whose marriage brought him close to the aptly named Savage family and who’s done hard time for robbery. It would be just like Jimmy, Sean knows, to ignore his friend’s official efforts and go after the killer himself. But Sean would be a lot more worried if he knew what Dave’s wife Celeste knows: that hours after catching sight of Katie in the last bar she visited on the night of her death, Dave staggered home covered with somebody else’s blood. Burrowing deep into his three sorry heroes and the hundred ties that bind them unbearably close, Lehane weaves such a spellbinding tale that it’s easy to overlook the ramshackle mystery behind it all.
An undisciplined but powerfully lacerating story, by an author who knows every block of the neighborhood and every hair on his characters’ heads.Pub Date: Jan. 30, 2001
ISBN: 0-688-16316-5
Page Count: 416
Publisher: Morrow/HarperCollins
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Dec. 15, 2000
This ran in the S.E.P. and resulted in more demands for the story in book form than ever recorded. Well, here it is and it is a honey. Imagine ten people, not knowing each other, not knowing why they were invited on a certain island house-party, not knowing their hosts. Then imagine them dead, one by one, until none remained alive, nor any clue to the murderer. Grand suspense, a unique trick, expertly handled.
Pub Date: Feb. 21, 1939
ISBN: 0062073478
Page Count: 272
Publisher: Dodd, Mead
Review Posted Online: Sept. 20, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 1, 1939
SEEN & HEARD
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