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ncrabb's review against another edition
4.0
In my most private, insecure, questioning moments, I can’t help but wonder whether the prologue is a technique too often used these days. It may well be, but in this book’s case, Burke puts the technique to fabulous use.
We are transported to the lives of a teenage brother and sister on a boat that belongs to their politician father. The two are cleaning up the boat in preparation to return to the home of their mother. The dialogue between these two as they work together is wonderfully snappy and authentic. In just a few words, Burke gives you more insight into the relationship of these two than a lesser talented writer would in pages and pages. You are drawn to both of them instantly. When the two hear voices above them stridently conversing with their father, Amanda investigates. Seconds later, she is back, but her youthful body has essentially been turned to something akin to raw hamburger, and she is rapidly dying.
Her brother, Seth, manages somehow to survive, but barely. Alerted to the horror on the boat, law enforcement arrives just in time to save a barely living Seth. It’s too late for Amanda and their father. And that’s just the prologue.
Detective Philip Lefebvre has saved Seth, and the boy Slowly recovers. But he refuses to calm down if the detective who saved him isn’t close. They form a tight bond, and both know that Seth could be killed by the murderer who killed his father and sister.
The tension continues to build as Lefebvre methodically works to find a killer. As he works, the reader is given creepy glimpses into the OCD-saturated mind of the killer.
Skip forward 10 years. A plane has been found in a secluded area. It’s a crash site. Inside is the body of Detective Lefebvre. Police had long believed he was paid off to murder young Seth and disappear. The name of Lefebvre is hated in the department, but Frank Harriman, whose wife is Irene Kelly, a reporter who once knew Lefebvre rather well, has been assigned to the case of the crashed plane. Harriman wasn’t part of the department when Lefebvre disappeared, so he’s the perfect one to take the case. What he finds is a far cry from what most assumed to be the case for a decade.
This is highly memorable for so many reasons. Things happen you simply don’t expect. This is my first brush with a Jan Burke book, but it’s almost a stand-alone, since it puts so much emphasis on Harriman and his investigation.
We are transported to the lives of a teenage brother and sister on a boat that belongs to their politician father. The two are cleaning up the boat in preparation to return to the home of their mother. The dialogue between these two as they work together is wonderfully snappy and authentic. In just a few words, Burke gives you more insight into the relationship of these two than a lesser talented writer would in pages and pages. You are drawn to both of them instantly. When the two hear voices above them stridently conversing with their father, Amanda investigates. Seconds later, she is back, but her youthful body has essentially been turned to something akin to raw hamburger, and she is rapidly dying.
Her brother, Seth, manages somehow to survive, but barely. Alerted to the horror on the boat, law enforcement arrives just in time to save a barely living Seth. It’s too late for Amanda and their father. And that’s just the prologue.
Detective Philip Lefebvre has saved Seth, and the boy Slowly recovers. But he refuses to calm down if the detective who saved him isn’t close. They form a tight bond, and both know that Seth could be killed by the murderer who killed his father and sister.
The tension continues to build as Lefebvre methodically works to find a killer. As he works, the reader is given creepy glimpses into the OCD-saturated mind of the killer.
Skip forward 10 years. A plane has been found in a secluded area. It’s a crash site. Inside is the body of Detective Lefebvre. Police had long believed he was paid off to murder young Seth and disappear. The name of Lefebvre is hated in the department, but Frank Harriman, whose wife is Irene Kelly, a reporter who once knew Lefebvre rather well, has been assigned to the case of the crashed plane. Harriman wasn’t part of the department when Lefebvre disappeared, so he’s the perfect one to take the case. What he finds is a far cry from what most assumed to be the case for a decade.
This is highly memorable for so many reasons. Things happen you simply don’t expect. This is my first brush with a Jan Burke book, but it’s almost a stand-alone, since it puts so much emphasis on Harriman and his investigation.
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