A dark and often grim homicide tale, but unrelentingly tense and never easy to predict.
Cops chase a killer targeting female college students and emulating the murders of Jack the Ripper in this thriller.
When the mutilated body of university student Jessica Hayden turns up, homicide detectives Mike Delaney and Dan Griffin are on the scene. Sgt. Victoria “Vicky” Bailey of the Violent Crimes Unit subsequently joining the case, however, will not make things less challenging for Mike. The couple’s relationship is currently on the skids, with Vicky wanting more emotion from Mike than he’s willing to give. But the investigation changes drastically once Mike receives a letter from the killer, signed Jack the Ripper and promising more murders to come. The cops have a heap of suspects from which to choose, though Mike favors professor John Foster, who reputedly had an affair with Jessica. After a second murder claims another female student, Vicky surmises that the killer has a link somehow to the university. Another letter follows as well, this time the writer sending visceral proof that he is indeed the murderer. It likewise seems he isn’t merely adopting Jack the Ripper as a name but duplicating his homicides, right down to the five deaths attributed to the infamous London serial killer. Certain that the new Ripper will soon be prowling the campus again, Vicky acts as a decoy, putting herself in danger to stop a vicious murderer. The story’s influx of suspicious characters makes pinpointing the guilty party exceedingly difficult—but undeniably fun. John, for one, is seeing psychiatrist Dr. Noel Oliver for, among other things, blackouts, happening roughly the same time as the murders. Similarly, campus security officer Armand Calo creepily leers at and occasionally approaches female students, while phys ed department director Alex Pollard is, rather ominously, growing bored with his extensive porn collection. Anez (The Blue Mirror, 2016, etc.) offers no relief with a sympathetic protagonist; Mike’s emotional detachment ultimately lumps him in with the other suspects, and it’s not clear how or why Vicky’s fallen for someone so cold. Nonetheless, scores of sordid, potential killers make for a truly unsettling experience and a genuine mystery, while a smashing twist in the latter half will stun some readers and upset most.
A dark and often grim homicide tale, but unrelentingly tense and never easy to predict.Pub Date: May 11, 2016
ISBN: 978-1-5327-5550-7
Page Count: 284
Publisher: CreateSpace
Review Posted Online: Oct. 4, 2016
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
Wacky plot keeps the pages turning and enduring schmaltzy romantic sequences.
Sisters work together to solve a child-abandonment case.
Ellie and Julia Cates have never been close. Julia is shy and brainy; Ellie gets by on charm and looks. Their differences must be tossed aside when a traumatized young girl wanders in from the forest into their hometown in Washington. The sisters’ professional skills are put to the test. Julia is a world-renowned child psychologist who has lost her edge. She is reeling from a case that went publicly sour. Though she was cleared of all wrongdoing, Julia’s name was tarnished, forcing her to shutter her Beverly Hills practice. Ellie Barton is the local police chief in Rain Valley, who’s never faced a tougher case. This is her chance to prove she is more than just a fading homecoming queen, but a scarcity of clues and a reluctant victim make locating the girl’s parents nearly impossible. Ellie places an SOS call to her sister; she needs an expert to rehabilitate this wild-child who has been living outside of civilization for years. Confronted with her professional demons, Julia once again has the opportunity to display her talents and salvage her reputation. Hannah (The Things We Do for Love, 2004, etc.) is at her best when writing from the girl’s perspective. The feral wolf-child keeps the reader interested long after the other, transparent characters have grown tiresome. Hannah’s torturously over-written romance passages are stale, but there are surprises in store as the sisters set about unearthing Alice’s past and creating a home for her.
Wacky plot keeps the pages turning and enduring schmaltzy romantic sequences.Pub Date: March 1, 2006
ISBN: 0-345-46752-3
Page Count: 400
Publisher: Ballantine
Review Posted Online: June 24, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Dec. 1, 2005
A strict report, worthy of sympathy.
A violent surfacing of adolescence (which has little in common with Tarkington's earlier, broadly comic, Seventeen) has a compulsive impact.
"Nobody big except me" is the dream world of Holden Caulfield and his first person story is down to the basic, drab English of the pre-collegiate. For Holden is now being bounced from fancy prep, and, after a vicious evening with hall- and roommates, heads for New York to try to keep his latest failure from his parents. He tries to have a wild evening (all he does is pay the check), is terrorized by the hotel elevator man and his on-call whore, has a date with a girl he likes—and hates, sees his 10 year old sister, Phoebe. He also visits a sympathetic English teacher after trying on a drunken session, and when he keeps his date with Phoebe, who turns up with her suitcase to join him on his flight, he heads home to a hospital siege. This is tender and true, and impossible, in its picture of the old hells of young boys, the lonesomeness and tentative attempts to be mature and secure, the awful block between youth and being grown-up, the fright and sickness that humans and their behavior cause the challenging, the dramatization of the big bang. It is a sorry little worm's view of the off-beat of adult pressure, of contemporary strictures and conformity, of sentiment….
A strict report, worthy of sympathy.Pub Date: June 15, 1951
ISBN: 0316769177
Page Count: -
Publisher: Little, Brown
Review Posted Online: Nov. 2, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: June 15, 1951
BOOK REVIEW
SEEN & HEARD
SEEN & HEARD
APPRECIATIONS
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