From Publishers Weekly
The extravagantly showy murder of a very private man opens White's engrossing fourth story about Colorado psychologist Alan Gregory (following Higher Authority). Alan's friend and neighbor, Peter Arvin, a skilled woodworker and solo mountain climber, is found tortured and bleeding to death on top of a grand piano on the stage of the Boulder Theatre. After Peter dies at the hospital where his wife, Adrienne, is a urologist, police detective Sam Purdy asks Alan to work up an informal profile of the killer to see whether it matches that of the person being sought for a similar murder in Denver. Complying with Adrienne's desire to be able to tell her young son, Jason, more about his father, Alan also investigates Peter's past. These linked efforts, soon complicated by a third theater murder in a nearby town, call on the full reach of Alan's professional skills and lead him into unexpected territory, psychological and geographic. He visits Jackson, Wyo., to find out from Peter's family about a forest fire Peter experienced as a young man, and he encounters danger at the construction site of a Colorado casino where more murders are discovered. All the while, he observes the relationships of others?Peter and Adrienne's unique marriage; the attraction of the woman cop in charge of the Denver murder to Sam Purdy; his own attraction to Jason Arvin's young nanny?through the lens of his love for his new ( and second) wife, Lauren, an assistant DA who makes some cogent observations of her own about the crimes. White, a psychologist, informs this intricate tale with convincing emotion.
Copyright 1996 Reed Business Information, Inc.
From Library Journal
Is there a serial killer staging grisly murders in northern Colorado theaters, or was the murderer of Alan Gregory's neighbor, Peter Arvin, mimicking a recent Denver killing? Boulder detective and friend Sam Purdy asks clinical psychologist Gregory to profile the murderer(s), while the widow urges Gregory to find out about Arvin's life before he met her. The trail leads from Arvin's family to a college pal and a casino construction site in a growing gambling town near Boulder, where the rising body count defies forensic resolution. At risk of his life, Gregory and his assistant D.A. wife help Purdy unravel the web of consequences of a single past decision. In White's fourth thriller, Gregory once again takes center stage, after a supporting role in Higher Authority (LJ 10/1/94). This highly recommended title is skillfully plotted with a cast of finely drawn characters and a strong sense of place.
V. Louise Saylor, Eastern Washington Univ. Lib., Cheney
Copyright 1996 Reed Business Information, Inc.