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Summary
Summary
Seventeen years ago, three women were killed, their bodies dumped in the wasteland of the L.A. River. The serial killer was never found, and the case was mysteriously closed. Now, all these years later, Detective Alex Delillo reopens the River Killer case to help solve her own brother's murder. Alex never knew she had a brother until she went to identify his body. He was found next to the river near Griffith Park, a single gunshot wound in his head. LAPD is calling it suicide, but when Alex reconstructs her brother's final hours she stumbles across his research on an old LAPD case-the River Killings. The prime suspect was none other than their own father. As Alex gets closer to the truth, her father's past comes into focus, and alarming flashbacks from her childhood start to plague her. A journeyman actor who disappeared when she was child, he had a history of violence against women, but was he capable of murder? Meanwhile, the schizophrenic son of the killer's third victim is out for his own revenge, and someone in the shadows is stalking Alex's every move and leaving a body count. In a chilling turn, Alex finds that the truth is as murky and as empty as the L.A. River itself. Replete with a labyrinth-like plot, feverish suspense, and the simmering setting that is Los Angeles, Frost proves he can rival the best popular suspense authors in this, his second outing in a promising new series that Publishers Weeklycalled "a jaw-dropper that will leave readers clamoring for more."
Reviews (4)
Publisher's Weekly Review
Screenwriter Frost (Twin Peaks; The X-Files) brings back Lt. Alex Delillo, Pasadena supervisor of homicide, from his impressive debut, Run the Risk, for another pulse-pounding, complex thriller in the tradition of Peter Straub's serial killer whodunit Blue Rose series. Delillo's father, Thomas Manning, a second-rate actor, walked out of her life decades ago, but she's still haunted by vague, menacing childhood memories of him. Her family issues resurface when her previously unknown half-brother surfaces dead, an apparent suicide, on the very site of the unsolved Los Angeles River killings that claimed the lives of three young women years before. To make matters worse, her darkest suspicions about her father are aroused when she learns that Manning was questioned extensively by LAPD in connection with the murders. When more dead bodies turn up, including that of a police detective, Delillo comes to believe that her father is still alive and still lethal. Frost's combination of psychological depth, complex plotting and an evocative, arid Los Angeles setting will have fans of intelligent suspense counting the days until his next book. (July) (c) Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved
Kirkus Review
Frost makes good on the promise of Run the Risk (2005) as L.A. police detective Alex Delillo returns in a case as intricate as a diagrammed compound-complex sentence. The novelist and TV writer (X-Files, Twin Peaks) gets going posthaste with revelations about Alex Delillo's life. A caller from the morgue informs Delillo that her brother has been shot--quite a shock, especially considering she didn't know she had a brother. Delillo's brother died just after trying to send her a fax, which she receives with one page missing. Tracking the clerk who sent the fax, Delillo arrives at his store to find an LAPD detective shot dead. The detective, Delillo learns, had a file on her father that reveals he had been a suspect in a serial-murder case 20 years ago and that the victims' bodies had been disposed of in the same place the body of Delillo's brother turned up. Their father, a featured player in movies who never made the top tier, disappeared soon after divorcing their mother. Is he still alive? As L.A. fires fanned by Santa Ana winds threaten her home (a motif that's a bit . . . overheated), Delillo teams with detective Dylan Harrison to uncover what links the events, and what she doesn't know, or remember, about her father. Attempting to interview the frightened clerk who sent her brother's fax, Delillo is thwarted when LAPD cops shoot him down. The cops insist he was about to pull a gun, but Delillo and Harrison sense the murders and others that follow are part of a cover-up related to the serial killings. They tie things up just about so, allowing for a twist too many at the end and just one loose thread. Tight, tricky and wickedly complicated, with sharp, swiftly drawn characters. Copyright ©Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.
Booklist Review
Pasadena, California, homicide detective Alex Delillo knew little of her father, Thomas Manning, beyond the roles he played as a Hollywood character actor. The Richard Widmark look-alike, who once appeared in a movie in which he was squashed by a cyclops, disappeared from Alex's life when she was just a young girl. Memories of Manning's violent nature (toward women, in particular) surface after the death of Alex's half brother, John. Could Manning be a murderer, or worse yet, a serial killer linked to the deaths of three women nearly two decades before? Alex throws heart and soul into the investigation of John's demise, enlisting help from fellow detective Dylan Harrison, whose good looks and kind nature make maintaining a strictly professional partnership tough. This is the second Alex Delillo mystery for Frost, whose crisp, prickly prose has been featured in episodes of The X-Files and Twin Peaks. Woven throughout the novel are images of the menacing blazes that threaten to level L.A.: Driving into the canyons was like entering a city under siege. Burning embers were falling out of the sky. . . . The tops of palm trees would explode in flames as if hit by a bomb. Frost delivers a superlative scorcher with a cast of memorably eccentric characters (including a brilliant schizophrenic hell-bent on revenge) and a sinuous plot that crackles and pops. Fans of Robert Crais and Michael Connelly should check out this series. --Allison Block Copyright 2006 Booklist
Library Journal Review
(See Prepub Mystery, LJ 3/1/06) (c) Copyright 2010. Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.
