Even with an ending some might find abrupt, Tomlinson’s confidence in his characters will have readers ready for his...
Life isn’t easy for Colleen Hayes in 1978 San Francisco. She’s an ex-con who hopes her daughter will want her back in her life. She needs to keep her sketchy security job so her parole won’t be revoked. And when a dying rich man hires her to find who murdered his daughter 11 years ago, Colleen will find her own life in danger.
When Colleen learned that her husband had been abusing their 8-year-old daughter, Pamela, Colleen killed him. She served 9 years in prison, and when she got out in 1977, she came to San Francisco to search for Pamela. Instead, she ended up helping a cop find the killer of Pamela’s friend. Now, a year later, it’s that tenacity that wealthy Edward Copeland values. His teenage daughter, Margaret, was murdered in 1967, her killer never found. Copeland, along with his surviving daughter, Alex, wants Colleen to find any answers while he’s still alive. Colleen’s questions, though, lead to another murder and put her own life in danger. Tomlinson (The Darknet File, 2019, etc.) deftly makes us not only understand Colleen, but root for her. He also does an excellent job of capturing the times of 40 years ago—Colleen can barely afford cigarettes at 40 cents a pack and spends hours making phone calls on a pay phone and digging for records; current readers will have to remind themselves not to think “Why doesn’t she just Google that?”
Even with an ending some might find abrupt, Tomlinson’s confidence in his characters will have readers ready for his follow-up.Pub Date: Aug. 20, 2019
ISBN: 978-1-60809-341-0
Page Count: 368
Publisher: Oceanview
Review Posted Online: May 26, 2019
Kirkus Reviews Issue: June 15, 2019
BOOK REVIEW
Virginia Chief Medical Examiner Dr. Kay Scarpetta (Cruel and Unusual, 1993, etc.) has given up smoking and strayed far enough from her high-pressure office to act as a consulting profiler for the FBI, but her nerves are just as frayed at Quantico, especially since her rebellious niece Lucy is a computer-whiz trainee for the Engineering Research Facility down the hall. Scarpetta's latest case is ugly even by her standards: the North Carolina sex murder of Emily Steiner, 11, whose forensics are so contradictory that Scarpetta wants to exhume her for a second autopsy. Before she can do so, North Carolina Bureau investigator Max Ferguson, returning home from Quantico, dies, apparently of autoerotic asphyxia, and his local contact winds up in the hospital with a heart attack. Scarpetta scurries to work out how and why Temple Gault, an apparent serial killer who's the leading suspect in Emily's murder, might have killed Ferguson—and what to make of her gruesome discovery in Ferguson's freezer. No sooner has she finished the grisly re-examination of Emily, than word comes from Quantico that Lucy's sneaked into an unauthorized area after hours and is getting washed out of the program. Scarpetta's two nightmares come together with a crash—a car crash that sends Lucy to the hospital and Scarpetta out to the field to run forensics on her own automobile. As always, tension is ratcheted up, rather unconvincingly, by plots whose interconnection is never quite clear and by the constant friction between Scarpetta and her niece; her sister; her FBI lover, Benton Wesley; her boorish buddy, Capt. Pete Marino; and Emily's mother, with whom Marino is having an affair. But beneath the welter of quarrels and coincidences is as insidious a study of evil as Cornwell has turned in. (Literary Guild main selection)
Pub Date: Oct. 1, 1994
ISBN: 0-684-19597-6
Page Count: 320
Publisher: Scribner
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 1, 1994
Although the pace of this intricate tale is necessarily slow, the investigation and its ultimate destination are gripping.
An investigation into an 11-year-old murder unearths some surprising revelations in Inspector Ian Rutledge’s 21st case (The Gate Keeper, 2018, etc.).
Rutledge survived World War I shellshocked and living with the ghostly voice of Hamish, a comrade who died in his arms. When he helps a former soldier find his wife, the grateful man gives him a tip that might help Rutledge find one of the most wanted men in Britain, Alan Barrington, who was accused of murder over a decade earlier and hasn't been seen since. Rutledge's boss gives him the unwelcome job of following up the clue, which begins the inspector's unrelenting search for the truth. Barrington had been accused of engineering a motor crash that killed Blanche Thorne and gravely injured her second husband, Harold Fletcher-Munro. Barrington had been positive that Fletcher-Munro drove Barrington’s friend Mark Thorne to financial ruin and suicide so he could marry Blanche. Rutledge starts out by investigating Barrington’s friends, including his lawyer and estate agent, both of whom have known him for years. When each refuses to confirm or deny that he’s still alive, Rutledge begins to consider the possibility that Mark Thorne did not commit suicide but was murdered by one of the several men who wanted Blanche. Conversations with friends and relatives of the parties involved with Blanche reveal many conflicting opinions. Each snippet Rutledge gleans leads him deeper into a complex maze, but he never considers giving up even when his own wartime demons come to the fore.
Although the pace of this intricate tale is necessarily slow, the investigation and its ultimate destination are gripping.Pub Date: Feb. 5, 2019
ISBN: 978-0-06-267874-4
Page Count: 352
Publisher: Morrow/HarperCollins
Review Posted Online: Nov. 12, 2018
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Dec. 1, 2018
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