Sole Survivors

Serial killers aren’t in the habit of letting their victims survive, and when someone—usually a woman—does escape alive, the trauma is likely to leave deep, lasting scars. Two popular thriller writers recently published novels featuring sole survivors coping with the aftereffects of their experiences.

Cold Cold Heart

Tami Hoag
Hardcover, 368 pages

Dutton Adult, January 13, 2015

ISBN-10: 0525954546

ISBN-13: 978-0525954545

Dana Nolan, a TV reporter in her twenties, escaped from a notorious serial murderer by killing him before he could kill her. But she is left with physical wounds that have destroyed her beauty and a head injury that scrambles her memory, robs her of the ability to speak coherently, and makes her dependent on her mother and stepfather. Tormented by flashbacks and nightmares, filled with rage at her own helplessness, Dana has little hope for her future. She can’t clearly recall her ordeal or the man who brutalized her, but the police push her to try, while her hovering mother wants to enclose her in a protective bubble.

Leaving the rehab facility after a long stay, Dana has no choice but to move back to her hometown and the house she grew up in. Instead of finding the peace and quiet she needs to heal, she discovers that her abduction has reignited interest in the disappearance of her best friend, Casey Grant, the summer after their high school graduation. When she encounters Casey’s ex-boyfriend, John Villante, she blurts, “You killed my best friend.” John, a Middle East war veteran so crippled by post-traumatic stress disorder that he’s reduced to delivering pizzas for a living and occupying his boyhood room in his despicable father’s house, has a lot in common with Dana, but they see each other as enemies. Tim Carver, Dana’s high school boyfriend and an officer on the local police force, makes sure John remains under the shadow of suspicion not only for Casey’s disappearance and probable murder, but also for any other crime that occurs in town. When her therapist advises Dana to find a “project” to give her days a purpose, she passes up harmless, enjoyable occupations and chooses instead to find out what happened to Casey. Driven to learn the truth even as she struggles with her own handicaps, Dana puts her life in danger again to uncover explosive secrets beneath the surface of small town life.

The mystery of what happened to Casey is slow to get started, and readers never get to know the long-gone girl well enough to care about her. Avid mystery fans may spot Casey’s killer before the book’s climactic scenes. But Cold Cold Heart is nevertheless a gripping novel because it immerses readers in the emotional turmoil of two people suffering from different forms of PTSD. Although neither Dana nor John is always likable, it’s impossible to be unmoved by Hoag’s depiction of their struggles to find solid footing in a world that seems to shift constantly beneath their feet. In an afterword, Hoag describes the relatively mild but never-ending consequences of a head injury she suffered as a child and challenges readers to learn more about PTSD, a condition that affects far more people than we may realize.

  

Die Again

Tess Gerritsen

Hardcover, 352 pages

Ballantine Books, December 30, 2014

ISBN-10: 0345543858

ISBN-13: 978-0345543851

I’ve read every Rizzoli and Isles novel Gerritsen has published, and I found this one different from the others, disappointing in some respects, but ultimately enjoyable.

About a third of the book is set in the past and narrated by Millie Jacobson, a young woman who was on safari in a remote part of Botswana several years ago when the guide started killing the tourists one by one. Alternating with Millie’s unfolding story are chapters set in present-day Boston, where homicide detective Jane Rizzoli and medical examiner Maura Isles are investigating the grisly murder of big-game hunter and taxidermist Leon Gott. The victim, who was putting his taxidermy skills to work on a rare leopard that died at a local zoo, bears the claw marks of a big cat and has been gutted and hung like a hunter’s kill. After discovering that Gott’s son disappeared in Botswana, Rizzoli and Isles wonder if the unsolved safari homicides might be connected to the Boston murder. Eventually Jane Rizzoli and her husband, FBI agent Gabriel Dean, travel to Africa to question the sole survivor of the safari massacre, who lives in fear that the killer will come back for her one day.

The scenes set in Africa are riveting as they detail the safari group’s inexorable slide into chaos and terror. The Boston scenes with Rizzoli and Isles are less compelling. The grind of an investigation, interrupted by personal scenes with Rizzoli’s parents, can’t compete with the chills of people trying to stay alive in the African bush while a killer stalks them as if they’re prey animals. (Rizzoli’s parents, at this stage, would be tiresome in any story. Why would her mother, after building a happy, fulfilling new life on her own, make the stupid decision she does?) The usual spark seems to be missing from the odd couple friendship of Rizzoli and Isles.

On the strength of the African scenes, though, I recommend Die Again. Fans of the series will not want to miss it.

Review: THE KILLER NEXT DOOR

The Killer Next Door

by Alex Marwood

Trade Paperback

Penguin (October 28, 2014)

Alex Marwood’s first book, The Wicked Girls (which won the Edgar Award for Best Paperback Original), was one of my favorite novels of 2013. Shifting back and forth in time, it focused on two women who killed a child together when they were both eleven years old, grew up in separate prisons, and haven’t seen each other since. As adults with new identities and very different lives, they come together again with disastrous consequences. The Wicked Girls is dark and probing, an exquisite psychological suspense novel.  

The Killer Next Door, Marwood’s second novel, is a different sort of crime story, creepy and sometimes grotesquely comic, but no less absorbing. The reader learns from the opening pages that the police are investigating the discovery of body parts in a decrepit South London rooming house and that a missing resident named Collette is believed to be a victim—but not the only one. The story then moves back in time to reveal what led up to this point.

Collette, in her thirties, is on the run after witnessing a murder. Using a fake name (she is actually Lisa Dunne) and carrying a bag of cash that she never lets out of her sight, she returns to England after years abroad to see her dying mother. She takes refuge in the anonymity of the rooming house, although it means putting up with a repugnant, lecherous landlord, and moves into the quarters vacated by a young woman who has mysteriously vanished.  The other females in residence are Cher, a teenage runaway who survives through petty theft, and Vesta, the independent but motherly woman in her sixties who occupies a basement flat. The male tenants are Hossein, a handsome Iranian seeking political asylum, and two nondescript bachelors named Thomas and Gerard. 

One of the men is a serial killer who calls himself The Lover. He keeps his victims’ corpses in his flat as quiet companions until they begin to produce an odor that can’t be covered up with air freshener. Then he dismembers the bodies and disposes of the pieces around the house and down the toilets. The place is plagued with backed-up drains and a stench accentuated by the oppressive heat of summer. When Collette moves in, The Lover is looking for a fresh victim.

The secretive tenants tend to keep to themselves, but one hot night an accident brings them together and sets in motion a continually surprising string of events.

Marwood has the same merciless eye and penetrating insight into human behavior that distinguishes Ruth Rendell’s writing. Although the men are less well realized, the three women are vividly drawn and memorable. 

This novel is not for the easily repulsed, and at times the descriptions of disgusting sights, smells, and actions seem repetitive. Yet—again like Rendell—Marwood finds a macabre humor in all these goings-on. 

In the final pages, Marwood refrains from escalating the sense of dread into a predictable bloodbath and instead takes a turn that leads to a totally satisfying conclusion. Despite the events leading up to it, the ending allows the reader to close the book with a smile and lingering thoughts about the meaning of friendship and family.

I received a free copy of this book from the publisher in exchange for an honest review.