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Hilary and Mark Bradley are trapped in a web of suspicion. Last year, accusations of a torrid affair with a student cost Mark his teaching job and made the young couple into outcasts in their remote island town off the Lake Michigan coast. Now another teenage girl is found dead on a deserted beach... and once again, Mark faces a hostile town convinced of his guilt. Hilary Bradley is determined to prove that Mark is innocent, but she’s on a lonely, dangerous quest.
Homicide detective Frost Easton doesn't like coincidences. When a series of bizarre deaths rock San Francisco - as seemingly random women suffer violent psychotic breaks - Frost looks for a connection that leads him to psychiatrist Francesca Stein. Frankie's controversial therapy helps people erase their most terrifying memories...and all the victims were her patients.
Linked by the Spirit River, the two towns couldn’t be more different: in affluent Barron, a powerful and secretive scientific research corporation enriches its residents, while downriver in blue-collar St. Croix, victims of that company’s carcinogenic waste struggle to survive. The bad blood between the communities escalates into open warfare when the beautiful Ashlynn, daughter of the corporation’s president, is found shot dead—and a St. Croix girl, Olivia Hawk, is accused of the crime.
When a young boy discovers the body of a woman beneath a thick sheet of ice in a South London park, Detective Erika Foster is called in to lead the murder investigation. The victim, a beautiful young socialite, appeared to have the perfect life. Yet when Erika begins to dig deeper, she starts to connect the dots between the murder and the killings of three prostitutes, all found strangled, hands bound, and dumped in water around London.
Elle is a survivor. She’s managed to piece together a solid life from a childhood of broken memories and fairy tales her mom told her to explain away bad dreams. But weekly visits to her mother still fill Elle with a paralyzing fear she can’t explain. It’s just another of so many unanswered questions she grew up with in a family estranged by silence and secrets. Elle’s world turns upside down when she receives a deathbed request from her grandfather, a man she was told had died years ago. Racked by grief, regrets, and a haunted conscience, he has a tale of his own to tell Elle.
On Detective Matt Jones's first night working Homicide in LA, he's called to investigate a particularly violent murder case: a man has been gunned down in a parking lot off Hollywood Boulevard, his bullet-riddled body immediately pegged as the work of a serial robber who has been haunting the Strip for months.
Hilary and Mark Bradley are trapped in a web of suspicion. Last year, accusations of a torrid affair with a student cost Mark his teaching job and made the young couple into outcasts in their remote island town off the Lake Michigan coast. Now another teenage girl is found dead on a deserted beach... and once again, Mark faces a hostile town convinced of his guilt. Hilary Bradley is determined to prove that Mark is innocent, but she’s on a lonely, dangerous quest.
Homicide detective Frost Easton doesn't like coincidences. When a series of bizarre deaths rock San Francisco - as seemingly random women suffer violent psychotic breaks - Frost looks for a connection that leads him to psychiatrist Francesca Stein. Frankie's controversial therapy helps people erase their most terrifying memories...and all the victims were her patients.
Linked by the Spirit River, the two towns couldn’t be more different: in affluent Barron, a powerful and secretive scientific research corporation enriches its residents, while downriver in blue-collar St. Croix, victims of that company’s carcinogenic waste struggle to survive. The bad blood between the communities escalates into open warfare when the beautiful Ashlynn, daughter of the corporation’s president, is found shot dead—and a St. Croix girl, Olivia Hawk, is accused of the crime.
When a young boy discovers the body of a woman beneath a thick sheet of ice in a South London park, Detective Erika Foster is called in to lead the murder investigation. The victim, a beautiful young socialite, appeared to have the perfect life. Yet when Erika begins to dig deeper, she starts to connect the dots between the murder and the killings of three prostitutes, all found strangled, hands bound, and dumped in water around London.
Elle is a survivor. She’s managed to piece together a solid life from a childhood of broken memories and fairy tales her mom told her to explain away bad dreams. But weekly visits to her mother still fill Elle with a paralyzing fear she can’t explain. It’s just another of so many unanswered questions she grew up with in a family estranged by silence and secrets. Elle’s world turns upside down when she receives a deathbed request from her grandfather, a man she was told had died years ago. Racked by grief, regrets, and a haunted conscience, he has a tale of his own to tell Elle.
On Detective Matt Jones's first night working Homicide in LA, he's called to investigate a particularly violent murder case: a man has been gunned down in a parking lot off Hollywood Boulevard, his bullet-riddled body immediately pegged as the work of a serial robber who has been haunting the Strip for months.
Ten years ago, PI Jessie Cole and reporter Ben Morrison each suffered a tragedy that changed their lives - and now these two strangers are about to share a nightmare. For Jessie, who makes her living finding missing persons, no case has consumed her more than the disappearance of her younger sister, Sophie. But left alone to raise Sophie's daughter, she realizes that solving the case has become an unhealthy obsession.
As a sniper with the elite Massachusetts State Police SWAT Team, Bobby Dodge saved a woman and her young son by shooting her armed husband. But vicious rumors begin to circulate the next morning when Bobby loses his gun and his privileges. It turns out the dead man was the son of a prominent Boston judge and had accused his wife of poisoning their son.
Defending a surgeon in a malpractice case, Jake Lassiter begins to suspect that his client is innocent of negligence...but guilty of murder. Add a sexy widow, a deadly drug, and a grave robbery to the stew, and you have Miami's trial of the century.
In the ninth installment of New York Times best-selling author Sheldon Siegel's iconic San Francisco series, ex-spouses Mike Daley and Rosie Fernandez have come a long way from their days as small-time defense attorneys. No longer working in a converted martial arts studio on the earthy side of Mission Street. Rosie is now San Francisco's Public Defender, and Mike is the head of the Felony Division. Their daughter is in college. Their son is in middle school. For the first time in years, there is a semblance of order in their lives. It doesn't last long.
Quitting her job as a high school science teacher to join the Seattle Police Department was an easy decision for Tracy Crosswhite. Years earlier, what should have been one of the happiest days of her life instead became her worst nightmare when her younger sister, Sarah, disappeared. After the murder trial, while her family disintegrated, Tracy turned her heartbreak and her lingering questions into a passion for justice.
Detective Angie Pallorino hasn't forgotten the violent rapist who left a distinctive calling card - crosses etched into the flesh of his victim's foreheads. When a comatose Jane Doe is found in a local cemetery, sexually assaulted, mutilated, and nearly drowned, Angie is struck by the eerie similarities to her earlier unsolved rapes. Could he be back?
When a woman's body is discovered in a cathedral and hours later a young man is found hanging from a tree outside his home, Detective Lottie Parker is called in to lead the investigation. Both bodies have the same distinctive tattoo clumsily inscribed on their legs. It's clear the pair are connected, but how? The trail leads Lottie to St Angela's, a former children's home, with a dark connection to her own family history. Suddenly the case just got personal.
When a vibrant young woman is found in bed by her hotshot businessman husband, carved from belly to throat with a very sharp knife, the elite Robbery-Homicide Division of the LAPD responds in full force. Best-case scenario for lead Detective Lena Gamble: Nikki Brant's husband killed her, case closed, and on to the next crime scene before the ravenous Hollywood media can get their lurid tabloid machinery up and running.
A serial killer stalks women in rural Ohio. He is deranged but brilliant, known only by the grotesque nickname the media has given him - The Doll Parts Killer. The name is apt. He dismembers his victims and leaves them in garbage bags in public places. A residential neighborhood. Next to a roller rink. Behind a Burger King. The investigation is a disaster. No physical evidence. Unreliable witnesses. To make matters worse, the FBI has lost contact with the star profiler working the case.
FBI analyst Kassidy Bishop is assigned to the "'For You' Killer" task force after a series of sadistic murders bearing the same signature arise in different parts of the country. The homicides are both calculated and savage, occurring in different states, but bearing the same signature: the words "for you" scribbled at each crime scene. The case chills Kassidy, bringing back memories of her own encounter with a violent criminal five years earlier.
Virgil Flowers kicked around for a while before joining the Minnesota Bureau of Criminal Apprehension. First it was the army and the military police, then the police in St. Paul, and finally Lucas Davenport brought him into the BCA, promising him, "We'll only give you the hard stuff." He's been doing the hard stuff for three years now, but never anything like this.
A woman stumbles onto a dark road in rural Oregon - tortured, battered, and bound. She tells a horrific story about being kidnapped, then tortured, until she finally managed to escape. She was the lucky one - two other women, with similar burns and bruises, were found dead. The surviving victim identifies the house where she was held captive, and the owner, Alex Mason - a prominent local attorney - is arrested.
Thirty years later, Laura's best friend, Tish Verdure, returns to Duluth to write a book about Laura's death. Tish knows secrets about Cindy that leave Stride questioning his entire past.
Let me start with this: any reader who doesn't know how to pronounce "Ole" -- as in 'Ole and Lena jokes' -- has no business reading a Minnesota book.
But second, if the reader had parodied African American accents like he does Minnesota accents, he'd be charged with unmitigated racism. The reading is way beyond atrocious. The caricatures are embarrassing and insulting to everyone from the Upper Midwest -- his rendition of North Dakota farmers is even worse. Fortunately, they have fewer lines.
The book itself? I love reading Freeman's books because I know the locale and remember it with fondness. That's what I'll do in the future -- read the books.
I imagine Brian Freeman himself is tearing his hair out over this assault and battery on his work.
6 of 6 people found this review helpful
This book seemed to have lost the spark that his previous works had. Though it is still very good, this one was just a bit off.
Tish Verdure returns to Minnesota to write about a case that is just too personal for Detective Jonathan Stride. This book will be about the night 30 years ago that Jonathan and his late wife Cindy thought would be the most wonderful of their lives, the night that they would make their most personal commitment to each other. But when Cindy's sister Laura never comes home and is found murdered, and the town is readily able to believe that it was the black vagrant that did it, and all was easily swept under the rug. But that was just too easy. This is the case that sent Jonathan into police work.
Now Tish is back to write a book and expose the truth. A truth that has too many people wanting this story to stay hidden. A truth that will set some free, but will bury others.
Freeman writes a tightly wound thriller that has multiple storylines and has the reader rapidly turning pages to see which conclusion will answer the questions the Jonathan has been trying to solve. Did his beloved Cindy keep secrets from him? Why didn't he know about Tish?
Freeman slowly unfold more depth to his continuing characters. Slowly, but sure, we begin to see the inner workings of these characters and what makes them tick.
Joe Barrett and Carrington MacDuffie were outstanding with the delivery of the story
4 of 4 people found this review helpful
Laura Starr is brutally murdered. 30 years later Tish Verdure, Laura's closest friend, returns to Duluth to write a novel, "Who Killed Laura Starr?" This story within a story is told from the point of view of Laura's sister, Cindy. The books go back and forth until eventually "Who Killed Laura Starr?" is abandoned. It is difficult to determine if this is with intent or not. The central character in both books is Jonathan Stride, husband to Cindy. Jon was there at the murder and typical of a small town is enlisted by Ray Wallace, the sheriff, to help with the murder investigation. This puts Jon on his career path and he eventually becomes a detective in Duluth. When Tish returns, she speaks to Jon first and Jon unofficially reopens the case on the strength of evidence that Tish withheld. This is the first of multiple secrets that abide within the adults who were teenagers at the time of the murder. They are revealed slowly and substantially impact a family who never even heard of Laura. The drama of Clark and his daughter, Mary, who is developmentally disabled, draws the listener further into the web. Clark is key to solving the mystery. The ending is somewhat unexpected and quite sad. Freeman does not allow everyone to live happily ever after; although some characters do. There is a scene at the end which requires the listener to suspend belief because it's a little beyond the pale, but forgivable. Don't buy this book if you are looking for tons of action. You will be disappointed. The book is a cold case and the investigation is slow. Most of the action is at the end. Character development, intricate relationships, and inequities within the criminal justice system are the primary pieces of this book. The mystery does get solved, but in its own time.
6 of 7 people found this review helpful
Descriptive, entertaining, and well acted out! Very hard listen to put down! This author and narrator combo has sucked me in to six books in a row... On to the next!
1 of 1 people found this review helpful
Not a thrilling thriller. The characters failed to engage my interest--I couldn't care about any of them. The narrator, while adequately capturing the Minnesota accent, detracted from the story. His voices for the female characters were especially grating, making them sound developmentally challenged. Most of the action sequences came off as ridiculously melodramatic, and the "romantic" passages were just cringe-inducing. Very amateurish.
3 of 4 people found this review helpful
And it never hurts to have great narration either.
In this series we are blessed with realistic, great police work, an engaging group of characters and clever mysteries.
4 of 6 people found this review helpful
Fantastic character development, narration, descriptive narrative that puts you there, hearing and feeling the wind, the weather, the emotions, fears, anger and love. Brian Freeman's books bring me right back to the Duluth I spent parts of my life growing up in. So far, this is the best of his "crop" of the best!
great book. keeps my attention. thats not always easy. I really hate that they make me write a 15 word review.