From Publishers Weekly
Who's the man responsible for grabbing Clara Pascal—an attractive, successful criminal lawyer—outside her daughter's school, then chaining her to a wall and subjecting her to a barrage of mental and physical attacks? Is it the nameless lunatic we meet in the first chapter of British author Murphy's latest high-tension thriller (after 2001's
Dying Embers), who has already killed at least one woman and is busy looking for his next victim? Is there some connection with the crime lord Clara is prosecuting in an upcoming trial, or one of her other cases? Could her husband, a flashy but unstable businessman, be involved? Murphy is absolutely fair as she moves her totally credible team of cops through each possibility, with some doors opening and others closing (or appearing to close) at every turn. And her villain, who never shows Clara his face, is all the more frightening because of his rough-edged intelligence. "Who do you think you're kidding?" he asks her at one point. "Of course you want to know who I am. Because you think if you know who I am, you'll be able to reason with me, use that persuasive patter you're so famous for." It spoils nothing to know that Clara does just that by the end of this well-crafted novel.
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From Booklist
*Starred Review* This stunning British suspense story will keep readers edgy and guessing until the very end. It opens with a cheerfully frantic domestic scene of Clara Pascal-- prosecuting counsel, wife, mother, and seemingly typical thirtysomething career-home juggler--trying to get to chambers on time while answering the demands of her daughter, excited and clingy on her ninth birthday. Two chapters later, Counsel Pascal is chained to a wall in a stranger's pitch-dark cellar. She is anything but a passive victim, however, as she uses her formidable argumentation skills to keep herself alive. Murphy ably spins several plot lines and points of view: Pascal's increasingly hopeless ordeal, the Chester Constabulary's efforts to find her, the musings of a serial killer. Everything hinges on motive. Was Pascal a random victim, or did her current case, the prosecution of a drug overlord, make her a target? Or is there something disjointed in her seemingly serene home life? Murphy's descriptions of the police procedure involved in recovering kidnap victims are sharply rendered, and her depiction of Pascal's courage is psychologically acute and moving. Perhaps the best feature of the novel, though, is the way tension is heightened through the juxtaposition of scenes. By setting the gut-wrenching events in the cellar against the painstaking detail gathering of the investigation--door-to-door inquiry, strategizing in the Incident Room--Murphy makes the reader squirm with impatience, willing the narrative forward. A first-rate chiller.
Connie FletcherCopyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved
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