About
Reviews
Search
Submit
Home

Mystery Books for Sale

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


  

DEAD END
by Mariah Stewart
Ballantine Books, August 2005
272 pages
$19.95
ISBN: 0345483812


Buy in the UK | Buy in Canada

FBI agent and profiler psychologist Anne Marie McCall had been engaged to Dylan Shields, of the large Shields clan, almost all of them members of the FBI. When a drug takedown became a shoot-out, Dylan was killed and now two years later what went wrong is still a mystery.

Anne has gone on with her life and is now in love with well-respected Pennsylvania Detective Evan Crosby, but they both understand that in order to have a life together they must dispel all the questions surrounding Dylan's death. They decide that they will run their own investigation to find out exactly what happened.

Meanwhile Detective Crosby has his own difficult case to work in Pennsylvania. Rich teenaged girls have been kidnapped, murdered and then posed for the police to find them. A serial killer is taking credit for the murders and trying to make a big name for himself. The wealthy influential families of the girls are clamoring for the madman to be found and the police are feeling the pressure.

But soon the killer breaks with his MO and very young, poor, prostitutes are being killed. Crosby and his men aren't sure what to make of it and so he calls Anne into the case in her capacity as a profiler to help them. As you can guess, the case is somehow connected to Dylan's death.

When I looked at the background of the writer Mariah Stewart, I didn't think I'd like DEAD END. She's a successful and well-loved romance writer who is trying a new genre with this series and this is the final installment. Not being a fan of romance books, I have to say I was very pleasantly surprised that DEAD END was a good, solid, well-written book.

The only drawback was that it seems that absolutely every person in the FBI who works around Anne is somehow involved or related, or married to each other. I don't think the FBI actually approves of such goings-on.

The clues are solid, though alert readers will easily pick up on the solution that seemed to have eluded all the members of the Shields family and the FBI. I found the love story between the protagonists to be realistic to a point. They are both extraordinarily even-tempered and forgiving people and though writer Stewart sometimes goes a bit too far in permitting them to control their anger and disappointments, the complete lack of overcharged melodrama usually found in romance stories was welcomed by this reader.

The last in the series, and the first I've read, DEAD END stands well on its own. The previous books are touched upon and explained without making the readers feel as if they've missed much. An enjoyable enough book, I recommend DEAD END.

Reviewed by Sharon Katz, September 2005

[ Top ]


QUICK SEARCH:

 

Contact: Yvonne Klein (ymk@reviewingtheevidence.com)


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