Eve Duncan has turned down the job twice already. Her skill and devotion in identifying murder victims and helping bring their killers to justice may be world-renowned. But Eve works exclusively for law enforcement and the families of the innocent, and the man on the other end of the phone is many things—none of them law-abiding or innocent.
One of the world’s most wanted men, little is really known about Luis Montalvo except that he is extraordinarily dangerous and that he never takes no for an answer. Now he wants Eve’s help in the worst way. For he believes they have something in common—and he’s about to prove it with a grisly warning.
Eve will leave everything and everyone behind, even the man she trusts and loves the most, Atlanta detective Joe Quinn, to travel to Montalvo’s luxurious armed compound in the Colombian jungle to identify the skull he has recovered. She has agreed to this devil’s bargain to save an innocent family, but also for a reason she can’t admit to Joe, to the CIA, to anyone. For the man in the jungle has promised to be able to give Eve what she wants most of all—the key to unlocking the darkest and most painful mystery of her past.
But Eve is in more danger than she can imagine. As she gets closer to identifying the skull, she finds herself caught between two ruthless killers with no way out. Now, with everything on the line, Eve Duncan must make the most chilling choice of all. And if she’s wrong…she’s dead.
From the Hardcover edition.
From Publishers Weekly
In the latest Eve Duncan forensics thriller from bestseller Johansen (Killer Dreams), the Atlanta-based forensic sculptor with an international reputation finds herself attracted, not always convincingly, to a sleazy manipulator. Duncan, who specializes in reconstructing facial features from skulls, has buried herself in her work since the disappearance and presumed death of her seven-year-old daughter, Bonnie, years earlier. That still-open wound is probed with sadistic skill by Luis Montalvo, a shady Colombian arms dealer, who offers to solve the mystery of what happened to Bonnie if Duncan agrees to attempt a reconstruction from a skull Montalvo believes was his late wife's. Despite the misgivings of her former husband, an FBI agent, Duncan accepts, and soon finds herself dodging bullets in a war between Montalvo and a drug lord rival in the Colombian jungle. Despite a shortage of the sort of meaty science that, say, a Kathy Reichs thriller typically provides, Johansen's faithful audience should be satisfied. (Jan.)
Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.
From Booklist
Forensic sculptor Eve Duncan is a complicated woman. She has survived her years in the school of hard knocks, although not without scars. And she has suffered the worst event a parent can, losing a child to abduction. Now she helps other stricken parents by reconstructing skulls so that victims can be identified. In this, she is one of the best. In addition to her work, she has Joe, a wonderfully understanding man with many military and government connections. But all this abruptly changes when Eve gets a phone call from Montalvo, a drug lord in South America in need of her services. Eve initially refuses to make the journey, but after he promises to use all his resources to find her daughter's killer and her body, this scarily single-minded and stubborn woman agrees to go, despite knowing that she will most likely be killed. Eve is then simultaneously repelled by and attracted to Montalvo. Johansen strikes again, creating both a nonstop thriller and a character study about an individual who has long seen the world in black and white, and now perceives only shades of gray. Maria Hatton
Copyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved