Quick Review - MISSING

Missing by Karin Alvtegen
Published – 2000
Translated from Swedish by Anna Paterson

Though born to a wealthy family, Sybilla Forsenstrom has for 15 years been homeless by choice. She has no address, no identifying papers, and is invisible among the other homeless in Stockholm. Her one tie to her unhappy past is a monthly stipend she receives from her mother--providing she remains invisible. She has been scrupulously saving the money, for her big dream is to buy a small place of her own in the country.

With all her possessions and necessities in backpack and briefcase, Sybilla moves about the city and countryside like a shadow. She has learned all the tricks: how to travel free, where she can find washing facilities, places where she can warm herself during harsh Swedish winters. She resides for weeks at a time in cottages whose owners are away, and leaves no trace she was there.

Occasionally she dons her one good outfit and dines in an upscale hotel, acting as a businesswoman on the road, charming and conning male travelers into paying for her meal and room. For years the game has gone well. A good meal quells her constant hunger, a luxurious room ensures one night of warmth, a fragrant bath, and comfortable sleep.

Then her mark is murdered in his hotel room, his body mutilated. Sybilla was the last person seen with the victim. Her fingerprints are on his key card. This "evidence" combined with mental problems she had in the past makes her an easy suspect. The only suspect.

Too frightened to go to the police, Sybilla is on the run. When a second and then a third man is killed in a similar gruesome manner, she becomes the most wanted serial killer in Sweden. The story of her troubled youth screams from newspaper headlines and across television screens.

She hides in a school attic to rest and regroup, and there meets fifteen year old Patric, a similarly isolated loner. Over the course of several days they become trusted friends, and when a fourth murder is committed, Patric vows to help her prove her innocence.

Proficient using computers, able to hack into police files, Patric learns names of people who might be involved in the murders. He and Sybilla follow up on the leads, with Sybilla dipping into her precious fund to pay expenses.

As they get closer to the truth, Sybilla, worried about Patric's future should his involvement with her become known, strikes out on her own and bravely confronts the killer.

Deftly plotted, Missing is both suspenseful thriller and detailed psychological study of a gritty survivor. Sybilla's struggles are interwoven with flashbacks of her unhappy childhood trying desperately to please cold and distant parents, and the culmination of harrowing events that drove her to become one of the Missing.

Conclusion: I enjoyed reading Sybilla's story. I was fully engaged and admired her intelligence and her determination to overcome enormous obstacles and live free. Many books I read and soon forget; this one has stayed with me.

--Cat

Quick Review - Alone

Published 2005

Part police procedural, part dark psychological suspense, this well-written chiller kept me turning the pages. (Through most of the book.)

The two main characters dragged huge amounts of baggage through the story.

Massachusetts State Trooper Bobby Dodge is a member of the elite Boston STOP team. An on-the-wagon alcoholic, he's been struggling for thirty years with mother abandonment issues, brought on by his violent, hard-drinking father.

Catherine Gagnon was at the age twelve kidnapped and kept for weeks in a dark hole by a sick rapist. The experience shattered her young life and haunts her more than twenty years later, when she is trapped in marriage to a physically abusive man.

Called out to a domestic incident in a posh Boston neighborhood, Bobby shoots Catherine's husband Jimmy as he is about to kill her.

Bad move. Jimmy Gagnon's father, a wealthy supreme court judge, charges Bobby with murder. The resulting investigation probes deeply into Bobby's life and has him questioning his existence and his actions.

Despised by her father-in-law, Catherine is accused of using Bobby to get rid of her husband. Making matters worse, the judge also accuses her of trying to gain attention and sympathy by poisoning her four year old son, who has been mysteriously ill since birth.

Making matters worser (sic) the man who terrorized Catherine as a child has been released from prison. Using the name Mr. Bosu, he receives a list of names and a sum of money and gleefully embarks on a murder spree, systematically disposing of everyone close to Catherine.

The gripping story unfolds, bad piled upon bad, almost depressingly so. But as secrets are revealed my fascination with the story fell flat, and when I learned the why of it all, I was underwhelmed. I could not believe in the story any more. Nor did I believe in the characters any longer, except for Mr. Bosu, one of the better villains I've come across. His motives were clear; everyone else's made no sense to me.

Conclusion: taut, well-paced thriller that falls apart at the end.
--Cat

Quick Review - BITTER HARVEST

Published in 1998

Ann Rule, a master of the true crime genre, tackles the case of a woman who has it all, then ends up doing two consecutive hard forties--forty years in prison for a capital offense in place of the death penalty--for the murders of two of her children and attempted murder of her third child and husband.

Debora Green and Mike Farrar seemed to have a perfect life. Both doctors, they had three active children and an affluent lifestyle. But beneath her devoted wife and mother facade, Debora concealed a volatile personality--she was subject to debilitating insecurities, extreme jealousy and violent rages.

After more than a decade, Mike had had enough and moved out. When their house burned to the ground, Debora and the children moved in with him. They bought a far grander house and Mike promised to make things work with his family. Life improved. For a while.

Once more reaching his limit with Debora, Mike again spoke of moving out and getting a divorce. This time the situation was different as he had met another woman.

Despite recurring bouts of ill health that brought him near death and the growing suspicion he was being poisoned, Mike moved out. Debora turned the children against their father with vile and untrue accusations, then began to drink heavily and take medication for depression. Mike often found her incoherent.

A stint in a psychiatric facility seemed to improve Debora's outlook and all seemed calm until one night Mike received a frantic phone call from a neighbor. His house was on fire! Debora was outside and one of their children managed to escape, but the other two died.

As the police and fire departments investigated it became apparent the fire was arson and the prime suspect with motive and means was Debora Green.

Rule gives us in meticulous detail facts of the investigation, who said/did what, dates, places, pictures. Involved doctors, investigators, lawyers, prosecutors, neighbors and friends add pertinent facts to the book.

Questions raised: Is Debora Green truly the monster who poisoned her husband, then plotted to kill her children by setting a fire that would trap them in their rooms? Is she a brilliant doctor who can't relate to people and, as some psychiatrists said, has the emotional intellect of a child? Can she reasonably claim she didn't know what she had done?

I pitied her at times. At others couldn't wait for her to be locked away.

I certainly pitied Mike for what he had to go through, yet wondered more than once why, knowing how unstable she was, he left the children in her care. Wishful thinking? Hoping for the best? I suppose his motives are another story, another book.

My greatest pity was for the children, two innocent lives lost, one changed forever. Though Rule assures us their lives were fairly normal I can't imagine this myself. They knew what was going on, however their love for their mother kept them fiercely loyal.


Conclusion: Like an episode of Law And Order, we see events unfold and lead toward a horrific crime, then the thorough work of prosecutors building their case. I found much of the book a suspenseful page turner.



--Cat

HAPPY NEW YEAR 2010

A new year, a new beginning, a new book...
But so many old ones still to read!

Welcome 2010!

--Cat

Quick Review - THE APPRENTICE

Published in 2002

Boston Detective Jane Rizzoli hunts for a serial killer whose gruesome method is disturbingly similar to that of imprisoned murderer The Surgeon. (pub'd 2001)

Rizzoli works hard to act as tough as her male colleagues, despite being haunted by the terror-filled moments she spent at the hands of the Surgeon before she captured him. Showing the weakness and vulnerability she often feels is not an option.

Complications arise when Rizzoli must work with FBI agent Gabriel Dean, and she battles both her belief he will usurp her role in the investigation as well as her burgeoning attraction to him.

A further complication-- and horror-- occurs when the crafty Surgeon escapes prison and it becomes apparent the two serial killers have become a team

When Rizzoli is captured by the unholy duo, I confess I almost expected the white knight (Gabriel Dean) to save her.

I'm so glad I was wrong. Rizzoli is the hero of her deadly predicament and she disposes of the vermin in a beautiful manner. I cheered!

Gerritsen is a superb writer. She has created a complex, easy-to-identify-with character in Jane Rizzoli. Forensic methods, investigative instruments, medical exams, are realistically presented in a thorough and interesting manner.

Conclusion: Compelling characters, a well-executed taut, suspenseful thriller






--Cat

Quick Review - UNSPEAKABLE

Published in 1999

The Players:

Two convicts, one E-V-I-L personified, the other a sad mental deficient, break out of prison and go on a vicious crime spree.

The slightly smarter brother of E-V-I-L, who joins in on the crimefest.

A small-town sheriff forced to retire, obsessed with the case he couldn't solve thirty years ago.

A gruff rancher who harbors a secret love for his widowed daughter-in-law.

Said daughter-in-law, a beautiful deaf woman, accomplished and self-sufficient, who has put her ambitions on hold and with her five year old son remains at the ranch from a sense of duty.

A rugged drifter with painful secrets

A slick banker who covets the rancher's land

Stereotypical characters aside, this is a suspenseful thriller with graphic violence and sex, remorseless cruelty and murder aplenty. Amidst the mayhem a tender love story emerges.

I had a slight problem with Brown's tendency to insert comprehensive past histories of minor characters, and the two-steps-forward-one-back approach as movement halts to detail a character's morning. Did some skimming, which is a shame as the book is well written.

And I can't define why, but I felt the drifter's big secret was, for want of a better word, bogus.

Conclusion: Not for the gentle reader. Stock characters in stock situations, redeemed by Brown's powerful writing.

--Cat

Quick Review - BLOWOUT

When I read BLOWOUT I didn't realize it was the ninth book of Coulter's FBI Series. (She's at thirteen now. Maybe more, she's so prolific!)

An intriguing start: FBI agent blows a tire on a snowy country road. After changing the tire he's accosted by a frantic young woman who insists she's about to be murdered. He follows her to a big house, she vanishes, and when he reports to the local police he learns she died thirty years ago.

Before he can investigate however, he and his wife/ partner agent are called to Washington DC to investigate the murder of a Supreme Court Justice. Off we go with the agents, who are joined by a Metro detective and the judge's journalist stepdaughter.

We do not revisit the first case until well past the middle of the book, and then only in a token manner. The FBI agents and the cop and journalist alternately interview everyone (and their dog) connected to the judge, clues are drawn out s-l-o-w-l-y, two more murders occur, there's a race to protect a law clerk who's become the killer's next target.

Much of what happens makes some sense to me when it happens, but when I learned the reason, the who and why, I stopped believing.

Oh, and the original intriguing case is also resolved, but again in an unbelievable, to me, way.

Coulter is an experienced writer, but this book could have been better edited. The story solutions simply lack plausibility. I later learned her FBI stories generally have two cases for the agents to solve. Had I known that before I started reading, my take may have been slightly different.

Conclusion: A mishmash of two unconnected cases, sometimes confusing, repetitive in places. For her fans.

--Cat