Middling, low-concept work from Pearson (Parallel Lies, 2001, etc.), whose handsome command of detail and breathless pace...
Lieutenant Lou Boldt’s eighth case (after Middle of Nowhere, 2000, etc.) uses Seattle’s vast, unexplored Underground to link a pair of high-profile murder cases.
Mary-Ann Walker apparently fell from the Aurora Bridge; Billy Chen drowned while trying to fix a broken water main. But forensic psychologist Daphne Matthews, who’s working the Walker case along with recovering addict Sgt. John DeMaio, is soon caught in the middle of a firestorm of accusations between Mary-Ann’s brother Ferrell, a homeless fish cleaner, and her abusive boyfriend Langford Neal. And forensics bear out the conviction of Billy’s “second cousin,” Boldt’s longtime contact Mama Lu, that Billy didn’t drown. While the mystery of Billy’s death—how did a drowning victim come to have extra oxygen in his lungs?—lingers on the back burner, things heat up for Daphne, who finds herself hounded by King County Deputy Sheriff Nathan Prair, the former counseling client who’s still infatuated with her and keeps dogging her footsteps to prove it, and Gary Hollie, the inoffensive accountant who tries to come to her aid when her car breaks down and finds his life ruined as a result. The real danger, however, comes from Lannie Neal, who’s slick as can be about the well-documented trail of abuse complaints his earlier lovers have left, and Ferrell Walker, who insists that Daphne nail Lannie for his sister’s murder, smothers her with phone calls and help she doesn’t want, then turns on her when Lannie walks out of his prelim a free man. Long before it happens, fans of this high-octane series will foresee a showdown for Daphne, Boldt, DeMaio, and one of several perps in the century-old underground tunnels that hold the key to both investigations.
Middling, low-concept work from Pearson (Parallel Lies, 2001, etc.), whose handsome command of detail and breathless pace still bring it to the top of the summer’s pile of procedurals.Pub Date: Aug. 7, 2002
ISBN: 0-7868-6724-8
Page Count: 464
Publisher: Hyperion
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 1, 2002
One of those rare thrillers whose revelations actually intensify its suspense instead of dissipating it. The final pages are...
A perfect wife’s disappearance plunges her husband into a nightmare as it rips open ugly secrets about his marriage and, just maybe, his culpability in her death.
Even after they lost their jobs as magazine writers and he uprooted her from New York and spirited her off to his childhood home in North Carthage, Mo., where his ailing parents suddenly needed him at their side, Nick Dunne still acted as if everything were fine between him and his wife, Amy. His sister Margo, who’d gone partners with him on a local bar, never suspected that the marriage was fraying, and certainly never knew that Nick, who’d buried his mother and largely ducked his responsibilities to his father, stricken with Alzheimer’s, had taken one of his graduate students as a mistress. That’s because Nick and Amy were both so good at playing Mr. and Ms. Right for their audience. But that all changes the morning of their fifth anniversary when Amy vanishes with every indication of foul play. Partly because the evidence against him looks so bleak, partly because he’s so bad at communicating grief, partly because he doesn’t feel all that grief-stricken to begin with, the tide begins to turn against Nick. Neighbors who’d been eager to join the police in the search for Amy begin to gossip about him. Female talk-show hosts inveigh against him. The questions from Detective Rhonda Boney and Detective Jim Gilpin get sharper and sharper. Even Nick has to acknowledge that he hasn’t come close to being the husband he liked to think he was. But does that mean he deserves to get tagged as his wife’s killer? Interspersing the mystery of Amy’s disappearance with flashbacks from her diary, Flynn (Dark Places, 2009, etc.) shows the marriage lumbering toward collapse—and prepares the first of several foreseeable but highly effective twists.
One of those rare thrillers whose revelations actually intensify its suspense instead of dissipating it. The final pages are chilling.Pub Date: June 5, 2012
ISBN: 978-0-307-58836-4
Page Count: 432
Publisher: Crown
Review Posted Online: April 22, 2012
Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 1, 2012
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
Catchy title; too bad the psychothriller behind it—despite the publisher's big push—is a mostly routine tale of cop vs. serial-killer. And it's really too bad for Patterson (The Midnight Club, 1988, etc.) that William Diehl's new thriller, Primal Fear (reviewed above), covers some of the same territory with superior energy and skill. A few charms lift this above run-of-the-mill: Patterson's hero, D.C. psychologist/cop Alex Cross, is black, while his lover, Secret Service honcho Jezzie Flanagan, is white; and the narrative moves briskly by cutting between Cross's ambling account and a sharper third-person tracking, mostly of the killer's movements. He is Gary Soneji—a nobody living a deceptively quiet life as Gary "Murphy"—who has killed 200 people and now wants to commit the Crime of the Century and become Somebody: Soneji/Murphy snatches the daughter of a top actress and the son of the US secretary of the treasury. Enter Cross and Flanagan, whose bad luck at finding kids and kidnapper—who, taunting the cops, kills an FBI agent and gets away with a $10-million payoff, while one of the kids turns up dead—changes only when Soneji/Murphy, cracking up, holds hostage to a McDonald's and is wounded by a cop. Here, Patterson's tale begins to mirror Diehl's: Soneji/Murphy turns out to suffer from the same sensational psychosis as Diehl's villain; and in the ensuing trial, Soneji/Murphy's lawyer pursues a defense similar to that of Diehl's attorney-hero. But where Diehl's villain roars on the page, Soneji/Murphy barely smirks; and while Diehl's courtroom crackles with intelligence, Patterson's is almost transcript-dull. Patterson does wind up, however, with a fine noir twist. Cross is a likable hero, but with a watery plot and weak villain—Hannibal Lecter would eat Soneji for breakfast—he doesn't have much to work with here.
Pub Date: Feb. 1, 1993
ISBN: 0-316-69364-2
Page Count: 320
Publisher: Little, Brown
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Nov. 15, 1992
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK TO SCREEN
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