Review by Booklist Review
In Connelly's best-selling thriller, crime reporter Jack McEvoy sets out to prove that his cop brother didn't kill himself, but he winds up tracking a serial killer, dubbed the Poet, who forces his victims to leave suicide notes drawn from the works of Edgar Allan Poe. A riveting novel in The Silence of the Lambs tradition. (Connelly's latest, set in L.A., is reviewed in this issue's Upfront section.)
From Booklist, Copyright (c) American Library Association. Used with permission.
Review by Publisher's Weekly Review
In a departure from his crime novels featuring LAPD's Harry Bosch, Connelly (The Last Coyote) sets Denver journalist Jack McEvoy on an intricate case where age-old evils come to flower within Internet technology. Jack's twin brother, Sean, a Denver homicide detective obsessed with the mutilation murder of a young woman, is discovered in his car, dead of an apparently self-inflicted gunshot, with a cryptic note written on the windshield. Jack's investigation uncovers a series of cop suicides across the country, all of which have in common both the cops' deep concerns over recent cases and their last messages, which have been taken, he quickly determines, from the writings of Edgar Allan Poe. As his information reopens cases in Chicago, Baltimore, Dallas, New Mexico and Florida, Jack joins up with a team from the FBI's Behavioral Science Section, which includes sharp, attractive agent Rachel Walling. Connections between the dead cops, the cases they were working on and the FBI profile of a pedophile whom readers know as William Gladden occur at breakneck speed, as Jack and the team race to stay ahead of the media. Edgar-winning Connelly keeps a surprise up his sleeve until the very end of this authoritatively orchestrated thriller, when Jack finds himself in California, caught at the center of an intricate web woven from advanced computer technology and more elemental drives. (Jan.) (c) Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved
(c) Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved
Review by Library Journal Review
The Edgar Award-winning Connelly (The Concrete Blond, Audio Reviews, LJ 9/1/94) introduces us to Jack McEvoy, Denver journalist. While investigating the suicide of his twin brother, a detective, McEvoy finds the death was actually a cleverly disguised murder. As he digs deeper, he becomes enmeshed in a nationwide FBI hunt for two psychopathic pedophiles, one a con and the other a literati cop. The majority of the narrative is told in the first person by McEvoy, while scenes depicting the murderers are rendered in the third person. This makes the tale a bit awkward to follow, yet Connelly is able to realistically show us both criminal and police psychology. Although the plot is somewhat contrived, the author weaves a very engrossing tale. Reader Buck Schirner displays his great versatility by giving each character a convincing voice. This is a fine reading of a mostly fascinating mystery.Michael T. Fein, Catawba Valley Community Coll., Hickory, N.C. (c) Copyright 2010. Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.
(c) Copyright Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.
Review by Kirkus Book Review
Connelly takes a break from his Harry Bosch police novels (The Last Coyote, p. 328, etc.) for something even more intense: a reporter's single-minded pursuit of the serial killer who murdered his twin. Even his buddies in the Denver PD thought Sean McEvoy's shooting in the backseat of his car looked like a classic cop suicide, right down to the motive: his despondency over his failure to clear the murder of a University of Denver student. But as Sean's twin brother, Jack, of the Rocky Mountain News, notices tiny clues that marked Sean's death as murder, his suspicions about the dying message Sean scrawled inside his fogged windshield--``Out of space. Out of time''--alert him to a series of eerily similar killings stretching from Sarasota to Albuquerque. The pattern, Jack realizes, involves two sets of murders: a series of sex killings of children, and then the executions (duly camouflaged as suicides) of the investigating police officers. Armed with what he's dug up, Jack heads off to Washington, to the Law Enforcement Foundation and the FBI. The real fireworks begin as Jack trades his official silence for an inside role in the investigation, only to find himself shut out of both the case and the story. From then on in, Jack, falling hard for Rachel Walling, the FBI agent in charge of the case, rides his Bureau connections like a bucking bronco--even as one William Gladden, a pedophile picked up on a low-level charge in Santa Monica, schemes to make bail before the police can run his prints through the national computer, then waits with sick patience for his chance at his next victim. The long-awaited confrontation between Jack and Gladden comes at an LA video store; but even afterward, Jack's left with devastating questions about the case. Connelly wrings suspense out of every possible aspect of Jack's obsessive hunt for his brother's killer. Prepare to be played like a violin.
Copyright (c) Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.
