Hyperactive and fairly tense fare from Pearson (Cut and Run, 2005, etc.).
Sun Valley’s plucky sheriff must head off a hired killer and save the woman he rescued eight years ago.
Young patrolman Walt Fleming’s scrupulous attention to criminal detail once led him to save upwardly mobile attorney Elizabeth Shaler from a murderous intruder in her vacation home. That bit of heroism put Fleming in the sheriff’s seat from which, nearly a decade later, he must oversee the security of Ms. Shaler, now America’s Attorney General, as she prepares to announce her candidacy for president at one of those rich-guy conferences. Fleming is trying to figure out what happened to an assassin who should have been on a plane from Salt Lake, where the locals found a fresh corpse. We know early on that the hired killer was indeed on the plane and that he is Milav Trevalian, a fake blind guy whose guide dog died en route in the baggage compartment. Who would suspect a blind guy, right? Trevalian has usurped the identity of the guy he murdered back in Utah, and he has an elaborate and fairly high-tech plan to make it past the layers of private security and secret-service agents surrounding the Attorney General. Poor Fleming has to work cheek by jowl with the deputy who’s been cuckolding him and who may have his eye on that sheriff’s star. But he keeps his mind on the job. There’s plenty to keep him busy, with two murders in 24 hours and some concurrent cruelty to animals.
Hyperactive and fairly tense fare from Pearson (Cut and Run, 2005, etc.).Pub Date: July 10, 2007
ISBN: 0-399-15407-8
Page Count: 336
Publisher: Putnam
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 15, 2007
Chilling.
A glaciologist seeks refuge in Antarctica.
A nearly two-year stint at the British Antarctic Survey’s base on South Georgia Island, halfway between the Antarctic mainland and the Falklands, seems like the perfect job for Cambridge graduate Felicity Lloyd. The landscape is breathtaking, the wildlife like no other in the world, and ever changing glaciers provide vital opportunities to investigate the effects of climate change on humankind’s future. But Felicity has another secret reason for choosing to pursue her professional passion in what may be the most remote place on Earth. She hopes that Freddie, who’s stalked her nearly her whole adult life, will never find her there. The trouble is, she can’t remember much about Freddie or the reason for his obsession with her; her memories are jumbled and distorted, with chunks of time missing from her consciousness the size of the icebergs she studies. Dr. Joe Grant, the psychologist she sees in Cambridge, tries to help her recover her lost moments, but just when he seems to be getting close, Felicity shuts him down, preferring to work out her problems alone in the frigid south. Leaving Felicity to handle her issues on her own, however, may no longer be an option for Joe once his mother, DI Delilah Jones, begins to connect the deaths of some of Cambridge’s homeless to Felicity’s blackouts. Bolton (The Craftsman, 2018, etc.) provides her readers with shivers worthy of her setting, although true aficionados of the psychological thriller may find the secret of Felicity’s illness a bit too easy to recognize.
Chilling.Pub Date: April 28, 2020
ISBN: 978-1-250-30005-8
Page Count: 304
Publisher: Minotaur
Review Posted Online: Jan. 26, 2020
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 15, 2020
Why is Sandford's new Kidd-series novel, The Empress File (p. 120; written under his real name of John Camp), so frazzled? Maybe because this increasingly popular author is putting his finest energies into his best-selling Lucas Davenport series (Rules of Prey, 1989; Shadow Prey, 1990)—as evidenced by this strong and satisfying entry, in which the Minneapolis homicide cop tangles with two memorable psycho-killers. The killers are coldhearted burn-deformed actor Carlo Druze and handsome pill-crazed pathologist Michael Bekker, who lures Druze into a murder trade a la Strangers on a Train: Bekker's wife for Druze's boss. The novel opens with Druze sneaking into Bekker's house to slice Stephanie Bekker and (at Bekker's insistence) to mutilate her eyes—but it turns out that Stephanie has a lover, who sees Druze, then runs away. Who is he? And why the eye mutilation? These questions plague moody, perennially unhappy Davenport as he deals with the case, and with his own demons of depression. Though from the start suspecting Bekker (whose drug-soaked soliloquies, and hidden obsession with observing dying patients' eyes at the moment of death, cast him as an unusually fascinating villain), Davenport can't figure out the mad M.D.'s connection to the second victim, Druze's boss, also found with punched-out eyes. So when the mysterious eyewitness begins feeding anonymous clues about a deformed killer, and then a third victim—an innocent mistakenly identified by Druze as the eyewitness—surfaces, Davenport looks elsewhere. His search brings him to Druze's theater company and to sexy actress Cassie Lasch, who becomes Davenport's lover and (inevitably in Sandford's dark universe) Bekker's final victim—along with Druze, whom Bekker double-crosses. In a brutal finale, a semi-deranged Davenport, throwing his cop-career away, extracts a savage revenge upon Bekker—a revenge that leads to a last-page revelation of the eyewitness's surprising identity. Atmospheric, suspenseful, and gripping from start to finish.
Pub Date: April 4, 1991
ISBN: 0425214435
Page Count: 358
Publisher: Putnam
Review Posted Online: Oct. 4, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 15, 1991
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