Following the success of her first thriller (Guilt by Association, 1995), Sloan returns with an excursive police procedural set in a racially divided northwestern town—a tale that, however imperfect the narrative, yields intoxicating suspense. Seward Island is a 45-minute ferry ride from Seattle, but urban life rarely touches this cloistered haven where crime remains virtually nonexistent. So when the daughter of the town's foremost businessman is found in a dumpster, brutally stabbed to death, Police Chief Ruben Martinez and tomboyish detective Ginger Earley know they're in for a hairy investigation. The 15-year-old victim, Tara Breckenridge, was quiet, popular, and devoutly Christian, but apparently not perfect: She was also pregnant. And, since Tara suffered stab wounds primarily in the abdomen, Martinez and Earley assume the killer to be an adult male worried about his reputation. After months of investigation (and the chief and his detective's blossoming romance), Seward Island's top cops are short on leads, and the community is clamoring for a lynching. Meanwhile, recently relocated Jerry Frankel, a Jewish high-school history teacher, tries to convince his bigoted students that the Holocaust was not a myth (as their parents have led them to believe); and a vaguely depicted secret society meets in a shadowy basement. Then, one of Frankel's students informs Earley that he saw his teacher's car near the scene of Tara's murder, and another asserts that she once saw Frankel put his arms around the girl. Naturally, Frankel becomes the prime suspect, and the town gossips condemn him with all the name-calling the local brand of anti-Semitism can muster. The evidence is unclear: Frankel could have been set up, or he may in fact be a cold-blooded child-killer. Sloan's probe into the nature of race and justice is hardly subtle, her prose clumsy, and her plot strained with overwritten characters. Still, the thrills come one a minute, and they chill to the bone.
Pub Date: Feb. 10, 1998
ISBN: 0-446-51948-0
Page Count: 464
Publisher: N/A
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Dec. 1, 1997
Gardner tacks on so many twists that even the most astute reader will be confused, and even the intriguing resolution, when...
A New Hampshire cop tries to piece together a mysterious woman’s life following a car accident and discovers nothing is as it seems.
Gardner (Fear Nothing, 2014, etc.) puts Sgt. Wyatt Foster front and center in this overly complicated thriller, while corporate security expert—and Foster’s new girlfriend—Tessa Leoni, from the 2011 Love You More, plays a distant second fiddle. When Foster is called to a single-car accident on a rural road, it seems like driver Nicole Frank simply drank too much Scotch and drove off the road. But Nicole, who miraculously survives the crash, insists that her daughter, Vero, is still missing. Foster and his team launch a massive search until Nicole’s husband, Thomas, arrives at the hospital and tells the police that there is no child: Nicole suffered a traumatic brain injury (actually several), causing her to conjure an imaginary daughter. As the details of Nicole’s original injury—she suspiciously fell down both her basement and front stairs within the span of a few months—emerge, Foster and the reader become more, rather than less, confused. Nicole’s history unspools in calculated sound bites, with each episode ending in an artificial cliffhanger. According to Nicole—who claims to be “the woman who died twice”—she escaped a horrific childhood in a brothel known as the Dollhouse, a place that’s the nexus of the mystery surrounding Vero, who may or may not be a figment of her addled brain.
Gardner tacks on so many twists that even the most astute reader will be confused, and even the intriguing resolution, when it finally comes, doesn’t answer all the plot’s unnecessary questions.Pub Date: Feb. 3, 2015
ISBN: 978-0-525-95456-9
Page Count: 416
Publisher: Dutton
Review Posted Online: Dec. 5, 2014
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Dec. 15, 2014
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
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