The suspense makes this a page-turner until the climax, as Collins’s plot combines academic satire, philosophical...
Mystery, tragedy and farce converge in this engaging novel of considerable psychological depth.
At the outset, the principal characters in the latest from the Irish-born, American-based Collins (Lost Souls, 2004, etc.) all seem to be academic stereotypes. Initially, the protagonist appears to be E. Robert Pendleton, an English professor at a small Midwestern college whose early promise as a novelist has dissipated and whose tenure has been threatened by psychological breakdowns as well as lack of publishing output. Pendleton’s career contrasts sharply with that of Allen Horowitz, a former college classmate whose reputation as a writer has soared while Pendleton’s has fizzled. When Pendleton’s college invites Horowitz as a distinguished guest speaker, paying him as much for an appearance as some junior academicians earn in a year, their relationship turns even more contentious as they vie for the attention of a voluptuous grad student notorious as a literary groupie. So far, so predictable. Yet the story takes a series of sharp turns when Pendleton attempts suicide; the grad student discovers a previously unknown novel of his (and a potential thesis topic) that suggests he might be a genius, a murderer or both; and Horowitz uses his literary renown on the novel’s promotional behalf. Within this small collegiate town, it ultimately appears that everyone’s past interconnects for decades, and as police reopen the unsolved case that inspired Pendleton’s novel (while Pendleton remains little more than a vegetable), almost everyone is at least potentially guilty of something. The story ultimately pivots on an investigator who attempts to untangle an increasingly complicated plot involving older men attracted to younger women and what might be a serial murder of teenaged girls (whose deaths or disappearances previously seemed unrelated). But the investigator, with the eerie parallels between his life and the crime, could well be the one who needs investigating.
The suspense makes this a page-turner until the climax, as Collins’s plot combines academic satire, philosophical speculation and tragedy.Pub Date: Sept. 7, 2006
ISBN: 1-59691-229-4
Page Count: 320
Publisher: Bloomsbury
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 1, 2006
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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