The Book Gourmet

The MacMasters, home early from their short trip, find their daughter, sixteen-year-old Deena, dead in her bed. She'd been repeatedly raped and sodomized and then strangled. The distraught father, a recently promoted Captain of the NYPSD, requests Lieutenant Eve Dallas to helm the investigation, and even though the trauma the girl's been through brings forth memories of her own abuse-filled childhood, Eve takes the case...Deena is already hers.

It quickly becomes apparent, Deena knew her killer, and the message he or she left on scene alludes at the daughter paying for her father sins. What is the connection between the killer and Captain MacMasters? Will the killer stop or are there more sins to be paid for?


A solid, well-written story, although it ended up being a tad too long, losing plenty of momentum in the last few chapters.

The kills were appropriately gruesome and the killer's machinations and planning meticulous, yet I felt the motive didn't really hold its weight. It was a little too far-fetched for my liking, with innocents once more losing their lives due to flimsy slights perceived by the villain. But those are sociopaths for you, I guess.

I didn't really connect with the plot this time; I felt rather detached from all the proceedings instead of the story pulling me in as it usually happens.

I wasn't that interested in the lighter parts of the story either, feeling the whole Charles/Louise wedding side-plot simply added more ballast to the plot, slowing it down, and added more pages to an already too long story.