โ Scribed by Greg Iles
No coin nor oath required. For personal study only.
Hailed by Dan Brown (The Da Vinci Code) for his "utterly consuming" suspense fiction, New York Times bestselling author Greg Iles melds forensic detail with penetrating insight into the heart of a killer in a southern town.
Some memories live deep in the soul, indelible and dangerous, waiting to be resurrected.... Forensic expert "Cat" Ferry is suspended from an FBI task force when the world-class odontologist is inexplicably stricken with panic attacks and blackouts while investigating a chain of brutal murders. Returning to her Mississippi hometown, Cat finds herself battling with alcohol, plagued by nightmares, and entangled with a married detective. Then, in her childhood bedroom, some spilled chemicals reveal two bloody footprints...and the trauma of her father's murder years earlier comes flooding back. Facing the secrets of her past, Cat races to connect them to a killer's present-day violence. But what emerges is the frightening possibility that Cat herself has blood on her hands....
Iles's previous thriller, 2003's provocative The Footprints of God , featured an omnipotent supercomputer and an on-the-run duo racing around the globe from North Carolina to Jerusalem. This time, Iles returns to more familiar ground: Natchez, Miss.; New Orleans; and the Mississippi delta, where a serial predator has been killing middle-aged men. Forensic odontologist Cat Ferry, an expert on teeth and the damage they can inflict, is called in by the New Orleans PD to explain the bite marks found on the bodies. Cat, the alcoholic granddaughter of Dr. William Kirkland, owner of the sprawling Malmaison estate and the richest, most powerful man in Natchez, has solved previous murders with her married detective lover, Sean Regan. This time, though, she's pregnant with Sean's baby, and this plus the discovery of old bloody footprints hidden in the carpet fibers of her Malmaison childhood bedroom threaten to plummet her into the depression that's plagued her since she was 15. She thinks one footprint might be hers, made on the night her father died of an ill-explained gunshot wound. Iles weaves in dark strains of child sexual abuse and the resulting repressed memories as Cat searches for the serial killer and for answers about her father's death. This overlong novel lacks the scintillating originality that made Iles's last outing so memorable, but he ties up all the loose ends in an exciting climax.
Copyright ยฉ Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.
In his ninth book, Iles returns to the Deep South, an old Natchez mansion to be exact, where 31-year-old Catherine Ferry, a forensic specialist, retreats after panic attacks interfere with her work on what appears to be a string of serial killings. No sooner does she arrive than she discovers that the facts of her privileged if troubled youth in the house, where black servants still cater to the whims of Cat's racist, iron-willed grandfather, are an elaborate fiction. In her quest for the truth, especially about the brutal death of her father, she opens the door to a disturbing family history that puts her at both physical and emotional risk--and, eventually, leads her to the doorstep of an unusual serial killer. Iles' dialogue leaves something to be desired this time around ("I have to keep digging until I uncover the truth. If I don't, I'll go mad"), and a heavy dose of melodrama (Cat, a longtime alcoholic with bipolar disease, goes cold turkey when she discovers she's pregnant) gets in the way of the mystery. Still, this provocative tale of twisted lives and dark, agonizing secrets delivers enough atmospheric suspense to keep Iles' many fans entertained till the last page. Stephanie Zvirin
Copyright ยฉ American Library Association. All rights reserved
A Novel
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Forensic expert "Cat" Ferry has a stellar reputation until a panic attack paralyzes her at a New Orleans murder scene. Praying the attack is a one-time event, she continues working, but when the same killer strikes again -- raising fears that a serial killer is at large -- Cat blacks out over the vi
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