From Publishers Weekly
All superficial characterization and sadism, this thriller about a serial killer, its plot founded entirely on coincidence, is charmless in the extreme. When a man and a woman show up at NYPD headquarters to file a missing persons report on their college-age daughter, detective April Woo does the paperwork. Woo eventually learns that California cops have found the daughter's apparently fire-branded body near San Diego. Shortly thereafter, a New York psychiatrist approaches Woo with several disturbing letters sent to his porno-star wife. The letters have a San Diego postmark, prompting Woo to connect them with the murderer (3000 miles away, but not for long.) Horrific, if predictable, descriptions of the pyromaniac killer and his methods of torture are interspersed with updates on Woo's investigation. Glass ( To Do No Harm ) attempts a multicultural angle by casting Woo as a Chinese-American in conflict with her old-fashioned immigrant mother, but the tension between them is hackneyed at best. From its farfetched premise to its suspenseless action-drama climax, the novel is a chore to wade through.
Copyright 1993 Reed Business Information, Inc.
--This text refers to the
Hardcover
edition.
From Booklist
With the same intensity as
Silence of the Lambs, Glass' thriller thrusts the reader into the terrifying world of the psychopathic killer. A young college girl is brutally burned, tortured, and left to die in the California desert. Thousands of miles away, beautiful actress Emma Chapman stars in a steamy art movie and suddenly begins receiving fan mail from someone who has an unnerving knowledge of her past. NYPD detective April Woo is assigned the case when Emma's husband decides the letters have taken on a menacing tone. Woo doesn't think Emma's in danger until she inadvertently finds a tenuous connection with the California murder. Then Woo realizes she's dealing with a sicko pyromaniac who's targeted Emma as his next victim. There's a heart-stopping, eye-popping race to see if Woo can outwit the killer before he ends Emma's life, and for just a few seconds, Glass stuns her white-knuckled readers into almost believing the good guys may not win. Glass is a masterly storyteller who combines a high-intensity plot with an engaging, attractive heroine whose personal predicaments lend a bit of welcome relief to the relentlessness of the hunt for the psycho.
Emily Melton
--This text refers to the
Hardcover
edition.
