The artificial premise and horror-movie clues keep things moving, but by the bloody, booming climax, there’s little reason...
In Smith’s debut, a children’s game turns into a deadly chase as a compromised mother must uncover old sins to save her daughter’s life.
Grace Descanso has a past. A recovering alcoholic and former pediatric heart surgeon, Descanso has only recently gotten back into the good graces of the San Diego police force, for which she now works as a forensic biologist, when tragedy strikes. On a rare day off, when the struggling single mother should be preparing for Halloween with her beloved four-year-old Katie, she is called into a meth-lab case. There’s tons of evidence for her to process, but things quickly worsen when a seeming onlooker kills two policemen. Descanso manages to shoot the killer, but not before he whispers an intriguing clue: “He’s coming for you,” he says, referring to “the Spikeman.” That shooting—and the fact that the dead killer was the son of a senator—throws Descanso back under suspicion and on suspension. But the welcome time off with her daughter, during which they can play Katie’s favorite treasure-hunt game, the “timer game” of the title, quickly turns sour. An unnamed enemy who seems to know Descanso well grabs her daughter and leaves a trail of sadistic rhyming clues, all based on the game. Desperate to save Katie, Descanso scrambles to uncover a path that leads to her own past and that of her former mentor, a bioresearch genius, eliciting help from various friends and her estranged lover Mac along the way. The novel builds suspense, but both the characters’ motives and much of the bioresearch elements stretch credibility. The lack of support for Descanso from fellow cops is equally far-fetched. Would they really believe she planted a bloody, eviscerated doll at her own daughter’s party?
The artificial premise and horror-movie clues keep things moving, but by the bloody, booming climax, there’s little reason to care.Pub Date: Jan. 8, 2008
ISBN: 978-0-312-36833-3
Page Count: 320
Publisher: Minotaur
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Nov. 1, 2007
BOOK REVIEW
A tepid follow-up to The Camel Club (2005), with few surprises.
Helped by a beautiful grifter, the “Camel Club”—the four-man band of conspiracy theorists—returns to battle a threat to national security.
Annabelle Conroy is con-artist extraordinaire; Jerry Bagger, mobster and mark; and Roger Seagraves, master assassin. All come straight from central casting. Seagraves is killing high-level government officials, and Conroy is putting together the con of the century, with Bagger as the target. The mysterious death of a rare-books expert at the Library of Congress launches the story, which splits off at first into two different plotlines. In one, Conroy and her team work their way up to their major score. In the other, the Camel Club investigates the mysterious death of a close friend. Things are slightly more exciting in Conroy’s world. She’s assembling her team, eager to settle an old score by taking down Atlantic City’s most notorious and ruthless casino owner. After a series of capers out west to build their bankroll, the team heads back east. There’s little drama Players act out their part; marks fall. The big score comes off without a hitch. The two plots intersect halfway through. Annabelle arrives in D.C., thanks to an awkward development, along with a new piece of unfinished business. Seagraves and the Camel Club are engaged in a cat-and-mouse game, and Annabelle Conroy is the special guest star. The merged stories reach a predictable conclusion. An obvious conflict remains unresolved for much of the way, setting up the next chapter in the saga.
A tepid follow-up to The Camel Club (2005), with few surprises.Pub Date: Oct. 17, 2006
ISBN: 0-446-53109-X
Page Count: 448
Publisher: N/A
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 15, 2006
Slaughter (Cop Town, 2014, etc.) is so uncompromising in following her blood trails to the darkest places imaginable that...
Twenty-four years after a traumatic disappearance tore a Georgia family apart, Slaughter’s scorching stand-alone picks them up and shreds them all over again.
The Carrolls have never been the same since 19-year-old Julia vanished. After years of fruitlessly pestering the police, her veterinarian father, Sam, killed himself; her librarian mother, Helen, still keeps the girl's bedroom untouched, just in case. Julia’s sisters have been equally scarred. Lydia Delgado has sold herself for drugs countless times, though she’s been clean for years now; Claire Scott has just been paroled after knee-capping her tennis partner for a thoughtless remark. The evening that Claire’s ankle bracelet comes off, her architect husband, Paul, is callously murdered before her eyes and, without a moment's letup, she stumbles on a mountainous cache of snuff porn. Paul’s business partner, Adam Quinn, demands information from Claire and threatens her with dire consequences if she doesn’t deliver. The Dunwoody police prove as ineffectual as ever. FBI agent Fred Nolan is more suavely menacing than helpful. So Lydia and Claire, who’ve grown so far apart that they’re virtual strangers, are unwillingly thrown back on each other for help. Once she’s plunged you into this maelstrom, Slaughter shreds your own nerves along with those of the sisters, not simply by a parade of gruesome revelations—though she supplies them in abundance—but by peeling back layer after layer from beloved family members Claire and Lydia thought they knew. The results are harrowing.
Slaughter (Cop Town, 2014, etc.) is so uncompromising in following her blood trails to the darkest places imaginable that she makes most of her high-wire competition look pallid, formulaic, or just plain fake.Pub Date: Sept. 29, 2015
ISBN: 978-0-06-242905-6
Page Count: 400
Publisher: Morrow/HarperCollins
Review Posted Online: June 30, 2015
Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 15, 2015
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