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Summary
Summary
Deep in the heart of a heartless city... She could have been any homeless, nameless young woman trying to escape Seattle's mean streets. Except the sixteen-year-old who stumbled into the shelter that night was missing a lot of blood, and something even more vital... Somewhere between life and death... For police woman Daphne Matthews, it was bizarre enough to call on the best cop she knew... especially when a search turned up more than she knew... especially when a search turned up more mutilated corpses. For ex-homicide detective Lou Boldt, it was the kind of case he couldn't resist. And for Elden Tegg, healer, only path to salvation... and immorality... Lurks the angel maker. And now, as the body count rises, tow cops try one last, desperate ploy. But they'd better start praying. Because it will take a miracle to stop a killer who's about to make one final, unforgettable contribution to humankind... From the Paperback edition.
Author Notes
Ridley Pearson was born in Glen Cove, New York on March 13, 1953. He was educated at Kansas University and Brown University. In the early 1970s, he was a musician and songwriter for a rock band, eventually writing more than 300 songs and the score for an award-winning documentary.
Having honed his craft writing scripts for television shows such as Columbo and Quincy, he turned to writing and published his first novel, Never Look Back, in 1985. His novels include The Angel Maker, No Witnesses, and Beyond Recognition. He has also published many children's books including The Kingdom Keepers series and a series of prequels to Peter Pan written with Dave Barry. His book Peter and the Starcatchers, written with Dave Barry, was adapted into a Broadway play that won 5 Tony Awards. He received the Raymond Chandler Fulbright Fellowship at Oxford University in 1990 and the Missouri Writer Hall of Fame Quill Award Winner in 2013.
(Bowker Author Biography)
Reviews (2)
Publisher's Weekly Review
In his latest forensic suspense thriller, Pearson ( Probable Cause ) brings maverick Seattle police sergeant Lou Boldt out of early retirement to help solve an especially gruesome crime: the black market ``harvesting'' of human organs. Police psychologist Daphne Matthews, volunteering at a shelter for runaways and drug abusers, sees 16-year-old Cindy Chapman stagger in one night, dazed and hemorrhaging from just-completed surgery. Perplexed to discover that no hospital has any record of the teen, Daphne contacts her ex-partner (and onetime lover) Lou, who now spends his days caring for his baby boy and playing jazz piano at a local club. The grisly evidence suggests that someone has stolen Cindy's kidney and used electroshock to erase her memory. Lou is lured back to his old job, and he discovers with Daphne three other cases of runaways who died after botched surgery, with evidence pointing to a ``harvester'' who uses veterinary techniques. The two must race to catch this medical monster before he makes his next fatal extraction. Pearson's engaging forensic detail--he makes complicated, potentially disgusting facts almost entertaining--and brisk prose will have readers racing to the cliffhanger climax. Literary Guild selection. (Apr.) (c) Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved
Kirkus Review
Potent blend of medical thriller and police procedural that resurrects the cop-hero of Pearson's Undercurrents (1988) and pits him against--of all things--a maniacal veterinarian. Lou Boldt has been off the Seattle force for two years, tending his infant son and playing jazz piano at a local dive, but his extraordinary empathy for murder victims won't let him refuse the request of police shrink and ex-lover Daphne Matthews (whose throat was slashed in Undercurrents) to help with her new case--a series of street kids found dead and missing a kidney, liver, or lung. Immediately suspecting that a transplant surgeon is ``harvesting'' the organs and selling them at great profit, Boldt rejoins the SPD and pushes for advice from the medical examiner (the narrative bristles with the sort of forensic detail that informed Undercurrents). Meanwhile, Pearson bares his villain- -sociopathic society vet Elden Tegg--as we see him snatching social-worker Sharon Shaffer with an eye to selling her heart to a mobster whose wife is dying from heart disease. Unlike Undercurrents, then, where suspense derived from ``whodunit,'' the tension here is strictly--and tightly--time-wound: Can Boldt i.d. the killer and rescue Sharon--or can Sharon herself escape from the remote dog kennel where Tegg's imprisoned her, naked and terrified- -before the vet wields his scalpel? Thriller fans will note that this setup strongly echoes Thomas Harris's The Silence of the Lambs--but Pearson matches Harris's pace as the hours tick down, marking off twists (a hiker chancing on the kennel) and hot suspense sequences (a pawnshop sting to break into Tegg's computer) until the cathartic, brutal climax. Exceptionally gripping and full of amazing forensic lore (e.g., that Band-Aids emit low-level radioactivity from being sterilized): a top-flight offering from an author who's clearly found his groove.
