About
Reviews
Search
Submit
Home

Mystery Books for Sale

[ Home ]
[ About | Reviews | Search | Submit ]


  

IMMORAL
by Brian Freeman
St Martin's Minotaur, September 2005
352 pages
$22.95
ISBN: 0312340427


Buy in the UK | Buy in Canada

Teenager Rachel Deese is not an easy girl for her mother to love. When she was growing up Rachel and her father always took sides against her mother and when the father died of a heart attack while he and Rachel were on a ride at an amusement park, Rachel blamed her mother.

Rachel's mother remarries a wealthy man hoping to make life easier, and the two women move into his house. But Rachel isn't any happier. She becomes a wild beautiful teenager filled with sexual energy. She often verbally and physically abuses her mother and does whatever she can to hurt her.

One day Rachel doesn't come home after a night out with some friends. No one is very concerned because she often stays out overnight without letting anyone know. Her mother is in another part of the state visiting her sister and Rachel's stepfather just assumes that the teen will be back eventually. But when there is no sign of Rachel for a few days her stepfather contacts the police and calls his wife and tells her to come home.

Lieutenant Jonathan Stride is put on the case. He was in charge of a similar instance earlier in the year when 16-year-old Kerry McGrath disappeared. The case was never closed because Kerry was never found and Stride ran out of leads as to where to find the teenager. Now, Rachel is missing and Stride is afraid that there is a murderer in Duluth who is kidnapping teenage girls and eventually killing them.

Things aren't easy for Stride in his personal life either. His wife died that year and he can't seem to get over her. He still lives in the small house they shared overlooking cold Lake Superior. To make matters worse, the media is hounding Stride, trying to get him to admit that there is a serial killer loose.

As Stride and his partner start to investigate Rachel's disappearance they discover some surprising secrets in her family. Soon, Stride starts to think that Rachel's stepfather not only killed both Rachel and Kerry McGrath but that he was also sexually abusing Rachel.

IMMORAL is an incredibly fascinating story. Author Brian Freeman often steers the reader in one direction only to pull us into a completely different area. The book does have some sex scenes in it but the author uses sex to move the story along. This is the rare book that uses such scenes to do more than to excite the readers. There are solid reasons for it.

We never really know who the good or bad guys are in this tale and the story takes the reader from cold Minnesota to hot Las Vegas trying to find the answer. The solution to the mystery does come eventually, but it takes the characters a long time to solve the case.

IMMORAL is an excellent book, filled with a masterfully complex plot with twists that makes this into a real page-turner.

Look for IMMORAL, and when you find it do not pass it by. Brian Freeman takes suspense writing to another level. You do not want to miss this book.

Reviewed by Sharon Katz, August 2005

[ Top ]


QUICK SEARCH:

 

Contact: Yvonne Klein (ymk@reviewingtheevidence.com)


[ About | Reviews | Search | Submit ]
[ Home ]