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Summary
Summary
In Marcia Clark's most electrifying thriller yet, Los Angeles District Attorney Rachel Knight investigates a horrifying high school massacre.
A Columbine-style shooting at a high school in the San Fernando Valley has left a community shaken to its core. Two students are identified as the killers. Both are dead, believed to have committed a mutual suicide.
In the aftermath of the shooting, LA Special Trials prosecutor Rachel Knight teams up with her best girlfriend, LAPD detective Bailey Keller. As Rachel and Bailey interview students at the high school, they realize that the facts don't add up. Could it be that the students suspected of being the shooters are actually victims? And if so, does that mean that the real killers are still on the loose?
A dramatic leap forward in Marcia Clark's highly acclaimed Rachel Knight series, The Competition is an unforgettable story that will stay with readers long after the last page has been turned.
Author Notes
Marcia Rachel Clark (nee Kleks), was born in 1953. She came to national prominence as the lead prosecutor in the notoriously high-profile criminal trial of O.J. Simpson in 1996. Prior to the trial, she had served the Los Angeles District Attorney's office for thirteen years, winning all her murder convictions.
Clark wrote Without A Doubt, a recount of the trial and the reasons for concluding that Simpson was, without a doubt, guilty of double murder. The book was published in 1997 and was a bestseller.
After the trial and a bitter custody battle for her two sons, Clark ended her law career. She has appeared as a regular guest on cable political and news talk shows.
Clark resides on the west coast with her two sons.
(Bowker Author Biography)
Reviews (4)
Publisher's Weekly Review
What could be worse than a Columbine-style school shooting? Rachel Knight finds out in Clark's ticking time bomb of a thriller, the fourth in her series featuring the L.A. deputy DA (after 2013's Blind Ambition). Called to suburban Fairmont High, the scene of the crime, by best friend Bailey Keller, "a top-notch detective in the elite Robbery-Homicide Division of the LAPD," Knight finds that her presence may be far more than a formality when forensic evidence suggests that one or more of the mass murderers might have escaped. From there, the two women embark on a pedal-to-the-metal race to solve the case before there's another massacre, all while trying to keep their efforts under the radar to avoid spooking their quarry or panicking the public. That a lone DA/detective team would have so much autonomy in such a high-profile investigation stretches credulity, but the twisty plot and dynamic duo make for a suspenseful, if sobering, page-turner. Agent: Dan Conaway, Writers House. (July) (c) Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved.
Kirkus Review
Ready for a fictionalized account of a mass shooting in a high school? Well, Clark is, though she comes a cropper in her attempt to rip another novel from headlines as painful as they are ubiquitous.At first, the massacre at Fairmont High seems to have followed a familiar script. The two masked gunmen, who started their shooting spree at a pep rally in the gym, roamed the halls, ducked into classrooms, murdered some 30 schoolmates and wounded many others, and ended up in the library, where their own bodies were found, balaclavas tossed aside, in an apparent mutual suicide. Unfortunately, the coroner tells LA Special Crimes prosecutor Rachel Knight and her buddy Detective Bailey Keller of the LAPD (Killer Ambition, 2013, etc.), the corpses werent actually those of the killers, who remain at large. Confronted by a murderous pair obviously inspired by the massacre at Columbine High but clearly determined to surpass it, Rachel and Bailey can think of nothing better to do than start interviewing teachers, administrators and students, angering the shocked, defensive parents of anyone they even suggest might be involved. Meanwhile, the killers take their act to other venues and write Rachel taunting letters that sound exactly like the work of a high school student. The result is to invoke the horror of Columbine and other recent mass shootings while insisting that the perps, who clearly believe theyre brilliant, come across as merely narcissistic, immature and hateful. Nor does it speak very highly of Rachel and Bailey that every suspect they think might be one of the shooters promptly ends up dead-end dead.An all-too-timely tale that makes you long for the day itll be outdated. Just the thing for readers whose appetites for stories of mass shootings havent been sated by the daily news. Copyright Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.
Booklist Review
*Starred Review* In a horrific scene torn from the headlines, two masked gunmen massacre students and staff at a pep rally in the gym of their suburban L.A. high school. Two bodies found in the library, masks at their sides, are presumably the shooters, who committed mutual suicide. But it's soon apparent that the library scene was staged and the real shooters escaped, having not only exceeded Columbine's body count but also having walked away alive. And this is just the beginning, one of the shooters says in a letter to Deputy DA Rachel Knight (who achieved media prominence in a previous case); this is a competition in mass murder. So Knight and Detective Bailey Keller must work against the clock to find the killers, consulting with psychologists and dealing with parents who deny that their children could be perpetrators. It's a bone-wearying search, undertaken carefully with a future trial in mind, as seemingly good suspects turn out to be dead ends. Clark handles sometimes painfully raw scenes with great sensitivity and skillfully works in material about what makes a mass murderer, as she ratchets up suspense to a deadly conclusion. Her fourth legal thriller featuring Knight is another tour de force.--Leber, Michele Copyright 2010 Booklist
Library Journal Review
Indiscriminate gunfire resulting in a terrible high school massacre in California's San Fernando Valley is just the start of a complex case for L.A. Special Trials prosecutor Rachel Knight and Det. Bailey Keller. The shooters had the macabre goal of beating the Columbine killers' gruesome death toll, and initially it is thought that the marauders had completed their task by committing suicide. But it soon becomes clear that the suicides were staged, that the gunmen are still on the loose, and that they are planning to continue the grisly "competition." When someone starts dropping clues that another horrific mass shooting is in the works, Rachel and Bailey scramble desperately to profile their suspects and prevent another bloodbath. Verdict Fans of police procedurals will want to read this latest work in Clark's Rachel Knight (Guilt by Association) series. The real-life prosecutor in the O.J. Simpson case and other high-profile prosecutions in Los Angeles, Clark brings a deep and broad knowledge of police and prosecutorial methodology to her story, though her novel's sometimes plodding pace renders it not necessarily among the best in the series. [See Prepub Alert, 1/10/14.]-Vicki Gregory, Sch. of Information, Univ. of South Florida, Tampa (c) Copyright 2014. Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.
