It doesn’t matter that Mosby has no interest in tying up all the dozens of loose ends left dangling. This is a powerfully...
Mosby’s latest nightmare poses a perfectly serious question most readers have probably never thought about: which is more harrowing, death or resurrection?
Two years after she was killed in a car crash, Charlie Matheson is found wandering the streets of her nameless English town, weak, disoriented, her face horribly mutilated, but incontestably alive. Her husband, Paul Carlisle, has moved on with his life, getting his new partner pregnant, and he refuses to believe that the woman is Charlie. For her part, Charlie doesn’t dispute the report of her death but tells Detective Mark Nelson that she’s spent the past two years in hell. Detective David Groves would certainly agree that you don’t have to die to experience hell. In the three years since Jamie, his 3-year-old son, disappeared and was found dead, he and his wife have split up, reuniting only for their annual private memorials, and he’s repeatedly been taunted by anonymous phone calls and birthday cards. But the latest card, which includes the message, “I know who did it,” crosses the line from sadistic to fiendish. Mark, who long ago lost a loved one whose death was never confirmed, succeeds in linking Charlie’s disappearance to the work of the 50/50 Killer, whose specialty of kidnapping couples and demanding that one of them decide which of them would be killed and which turned free was so harrowing that pursuing him got Detective John Mercer kicked off the force. But Mark is up against both an exceptionally evil cadre of villains and a resourceful author (The Nightmare Place, 2015, etc.) whose unannounced and often duplicitous shifts in time are in their own way just as nasty.
It doesn’t matter that Mosby has no interest in tying up all the dozens of loose ends left dangling. This is a powerfully haunting tale you don’t so much pursue to its resolution as mercifully awaken from.Pub Date: Sept. 27, 2016
ISBN: 978-1-68177-208-0
Page Count: 352
Publisher: Pegasus
Review Posted Online: June 29, 2016
Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 15, 2016
Lecter emerges as one of the great villains of thrillerdom, and this novel, likely to garner a huge readership, as one of...
With this stunning sequel to his 1981 blockbuster, Red Dragon, Harris (Black Sunday, 1975) seals his reputation as a thriller-master by delivering a deeply involving, blood-freezing tale of a young female F.B.I. trainee on the trail of a serial killer.
The premise of Red Dragon was its detective's ability to sympathize with the killer he sought. Here, Harris reverses thematic gears, finding an unbridgeable chasm between good and evil. On the side of light stand spunky heroine Candice Starling and her compassionate FBI boss, Jack Crawford; in the darkness dwell two indelible creations: rampaging serial killer "Buffalo Bill"—so-nicknamed because he skins the women he kills—and homicidal genius Dr. Hannibal Lecter, a minor figure from Red Dragon here expanded into the very embodiment of self-knowing evil. With no clues to Bill's identity, a desperate Crawford sends Starling to the madhouse where Lecter, an expert on the criminally insane, is imprisoned. Will the insane psychologist help ferret out Bill? Yes, but at a price: Starling must reveal a personal secret for each sliver of advice. In a series of chilling meetings, Starling strips her psyche bare; Lecter responds by toying with her, feeding helpful but inconclusive clues. Meanwhile, Bill—a walking nightmare busy making a human suit out of the skins he harvests—kidnaps a congresswoman's daughter, dumping her into a pit in his basement. The congresswoman learns of Lecter's help and offers him a deal: identify Bill—a former patient of his—and Lector will be transferred to a room with a view. Sadistically, Lecter coughs up a false name—and then escapes during his transfer in an orgy of killing. As the clock winds down, Starling and Crawford race to find Bill—a race that culminates in an ultratense, violent confrontation between Starling and the madman in his lair—while Lecter connives to stay free; will he return to cast his long, black shadow in yet another sequel? A tour de force of suspense, dark and polished as onyx.
Lecter emerges as one of the great villains of thrillerdom, and this novel, likely to garner a huge readership, as one of the most gripping reads of the year.Pub Date: Aug. 29, 1988
ISBN: 978-0-312-02282-2
Page Count: 352
Publisher: St. Martin's
Review Posted Online: July 2, 2019
Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 15, 1988
BOOK TO SCREEN
BOOK TO SCREEN
A taut, exceptional thriller.
If you’ve always wished Lee Child’s Jack Reacher had a little more balance in his life—but the same formidable talents—you'll love Joe Pike and the latest book in this long, superb series (The Wanted, 2017, etc.).
All Joe wanted to do was go to the bank and make a deposit. He knew Isabel Roland, the young teller, seemed a little interested in him, but he doesn’t mix romance and money. Sitting in his car shortly after leaving the bank, though, he notices Isabel walking outside and putting on a pair of sunglasses, and then he sees her talking to a man and disappearing into an SUV with him, "a flash of shock in her eyes." Joe's training—which includes stints in the Marine Corps, the Los Angeles Police Department, and “various private military contractors”—makes him sit up and pay attention. He follows along in his own Jeep, and when the SUV stops for a traffic light, Isabel’s abductors don’t stand a chance. Then, when Isabel is kidnapped again, Joe feels compelled to find her. He enlists Elvis Cole, his longtime friend and private eye, whose laconic style and sharp wit are a helpful counterbalance to Joe’s terse style. As they search for answers, more dead bodies pile up, and the men wonder just how innocent this bank teller really is. Told from the alternating perspectives of Joe, Elvis, and various criminals, the story becomes multilayered while the tension builds. Crais never loses control of his clean, clear prose or his ability to sketch fully fleshed characters in a few scenes, with Joe providing the action and Elvis providing the insight.
A taut, exceptional thriller.Pub Date: Aug. 6, 2019
ISBN: 978-0-525-53568-3
Page Count: 352
Publisher: Putnam
Review Posted Online: June 30, 2019
Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 15, 2019
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