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Summary
Summary
Edgar Award winner Meg Gardiner returns with a third propulsive, groundbreaking thriller about forensic psychiatrist Jo Beckett and the lies that are even more dangerous than fame.
Tasia McFarland is a washed-up country-pop singer desperate for the break that will get her topping the charts again. The tabloids have raked over every part of Tasia's rocky life, following every high and low, her addictions, her breakdowns, her increasingly erratic behavior-and every broken relationship. The highlight of this lowlight reel: her failed marriage to an ambitious Army officer whose political talents earned him a spot in the nation's highest office. Tasia McFarland is the ex-wife of the President of the United States.
So when Tasia writes a song with politically-charged lyrics, people take note and her star begins to rise anew. In the spectacle-driven opener of her comeback tour, she is lowered into a stadium on a zip line and as helicopters fly overhead she fires her prop Colt 45 at the fireworks-filled stage. Tasia is riding high.
Until she's killed by a bullet to the neck, before the shocked crowd of 40,000.
When video can't prove that the shot came from Tasia's own Colt .45 and the ballistics report comes up empty, the authorities call on forensic psychiatrist Jo Beckett to do a psychological autopsy and clean up the potential political disaster. But as Jo sifts through the facts, she only finds more questions. Was Tasia's gun loaded? Did she kill herself in one last cry for attention? Were her politically-charged lyrics the rantings of a paranoid woman losing her grip? Or warnings from a woman afraid and in danger? For Jo, pouring over Tasia's past quickly becomes a race to extinguish the conspiracy rumor mill before it incites a level of violence that reaches America's highest corridors of power-and tears apart the very fabric of our nation.
Author Notes
Meg Gardiner was born in Oklahoma and raised in California.
She graduated from Stanford University and practiced law in Los Angeles and taught writing at the University of California, Santa Barbara.
Meg authored China Lake which won the 2009 Edgar award and The Dirty Secrets Club which won the Romantic Times Reviewers' Choice Award 2008. The Liar's Lullaby (Dutton Adult, June 2010) is her eighth novel.
Meg lives with her husband and their three children near London.
(Bowker Author Biography)
Reviews (4)
Publisher's Weekly Review
Jo Beckett investigates a national security threat in Edgar-winner Gardiner's absorbing third thriller to feature the San Francisco forensic psychiatrist (after The Memory Collector). When troubled country singer Tasia McFarland-who happens to be the U.S. president's ex-wife-dies of a gunshot wound to the neck during a stunt that goes awry at a huge outdoor concert, Jo's SFPD friend, Lt. Amy Tang, asks Jo to help determine whether Tasia, who fired a Colt .45 automatic as part of the stunt, shot herself or was shot by an assassin. The ballistics are inconclusive. As Jo looks into the sordid details of Tasia's life, an antigovernment extremist, Tom Paine, who runs a conspiracy-fueled Web site called Tree of Liberty, accuses people in the government-in particular, President Robert McFarland-of orchestrating Tasia's death and demands punishment for those responsible. Despite the broad scope of Jo's inquiry, Gardiner mostly manages to keep the far-reaching plot on course. (June) (c) Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved
Booklist Review
*Starred Review* Tasia McFarland may be a has-been country singer, but her status as ex-wife of the current president keeps her in the public eye. At the opening of Gardiner's third mystery to feature San Francisco forensic psychiatrist Jo Beckett (after The Memory Collector, 2009), McFarland is killed when a stunt at one of her concerts goes terribly awry. Speculation about her death abounds, given the singer's well-publicized bouts with bipolar mania. Was her tragic end just a grandiose and very public suicide, or had she really been in mortal danger as one of her recent songs claimed? Beckett takes the case, and when probing puts her in the path of a stalker, she becomes convinced that the threats to Tasia were real. She hopes Ace Chennault, ghostwriter of Tasia's forthcoming biography, can shed some light. (He claims to have explosive revelations about Tasia's affair with fellow country singer Searle Lecroix but refuses to divulge them.) The sharp investigator forges ahead, making herself the target of right-wing radicals with assassination on their minds. Breathless suspense, slick plotting, and a cast of compelling characters make this a solid addition to Edgar winner Gardiner's dossier of superlative thrillers with appeal both for pure suspense fans and those who favor well-delineated characters.--Block, Allison Copyright 2010 Booklist
Kirkus Review
The SFPD once more calls on forensic psychiatrist Jo Beckett, this time to help explain the shooting death of a singer/songwriter whose showy comeback entrance to a concert stage was cut short when she was shot halfway down her zipline.Tasia McFarland has always been a wild woman, so it's no surprise when she plans to zip down a wire to join her lover, rocker Searle Lacroix, onstage at the Giants' ballpark, amid billows of manufactured smoke. The surprise is that when she emerges from the smoke, Tasia's been shot in the neck, evidently with the .45 she was holding herself only seconds beforea weapon that's legally registered to her long-ago husband, Robert McFarland, who in the meantime has been elected President of the United States. Clearly there are some tricky angles here. Lt. Amy Tang, the homicide detective who's on the scene along with Jo and her sister Tina, wants to know whether Tasia shot herself or had help. At first the case for suicide seems overwhelming. After bipolar Tasia went off her meds, a timely Xanax put her into a mixed state in which she was both excited and depressed. On the other hand, she told anyone who'd listen that she feared an assassination attempt that was only the beginning of a bigger plot (against the president?) and left behind two new songs she claimed would hold the clues to her murder. Though she sheds curiously little light on Tasia's state of mind, Jo does some smart detective work linking the volatile performer to both a determined stalker and a right-wing conspiracy whose home base is the Tree of Liberty website published by one Tom Paine. The ambitious, preposterous plot is filled with interoffice power plays, suspect political operatives, double-crosses by media types and action sequences, which Gardiner (The Memory Collector, 2009, etc.) pumps up brilliantly.Catnip for Jeffery Deaver fans who can't wait for their next fix and like-minded souls who value constant stimulation over plausibility. Copyright Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.
Library Journal Review
While performing a stunt before a sold-out crowd, Tasia McFarland, country star and ex-wife of the President of the United States, is dramatically killed by a shot to the neck. Police can't determine whether Tasia's death was suicide or murder, and forensic psychiatrist Jo Beckett is enlisted to piece together Tasia's final days to unravel the mystery. Her investigation into the late star's complicated life uncovers several possible motives. Was Tasia's death the result of her fragile emotional state? Connected to an extremist antigovernment movement? Or linked to her ex-spouse? As Jo gets closer to the truth, she faces danger up close and personal but refuses to back down. VERDICT With her third installment in the Jo Beckett series (after The Dirty Secrets Club and The Memory Collector), Gardiner delivers an action-packed thriller that will hold readers' interest, despite sometimes improbable situations. [See Prepub Alert, LJ 2/1/10.]-Mary Todd Chestnut, North Kentucky Univ. Lib., Highland Heights (c) Copyright 2010. Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.
