|
[ Home ]
[ About | Reviews | Search | Submit ]
Four fifth graders are running through a park after school when one of them pitches over a hill and falls onto the body of a dead woman, buried except for her head. The sheriff's department responds, and the chief deputy is the father of one of the children, a boy who is a sadistic bully. The other three children are his toady, the son of the local dentist, and the daughter of a lawyer. The detective heading the investigation, Tony Mendez, believes there may be a serial killer because the bodies of two other women have been found in much the same condition. Present at the scene in the park is Anne Navarre who is the fifth grade teacher. She knows her students very well and tries to help them deal with this horror. Back at Quantico in Virginia at the Behavioral Sciences Unit of the FBI, Vince Leone is returning to work after literally being shot in the head. He decides to go to California in an unofficial capacity to help out the investigation and also to recruit Mendez who has attended classes at Quantico. Family relationships are integral to this story. Parents and children, especially fathers and their sons, help readers understand what is happening and why. How fathers treat their sons is very revealing. Ms. Hoag tried an interesting experiment. She chose to set this book in 1985, a time when the Behavioral Science Unit was just getting respectable and was mistrusted by many local police. Computers were not widespread and cops still took handwritten notes and had to compare fingerprints with the human eye. DNA was not available to point the finger at the guilty party. Cell phones were so big people had to lug them in a small suitcase. All of this puts a different spin on how these crimes will be solved. The characters are somewhat two-dimensional but described well enough that the reader gets to know and like or dislike them quite soon. We care about what happens to these four children who remain entangled in the investigation and the story. We see their parents and how they interact with each other. The sheriff''s deputies are human beings with problems and satisfactions as is the FBI man. There is explicit violence in this book. In fact, the first chapter describes the torture of a woman whose lips and eyes have been glued shut. More descriptions are scattered throughout the book. If violence against women upsets you, this may not be a book you want to read. I generally am not too happy with books that exploit violence against women, but this was done so well and the characters were so intriguing that I kept reading and enjoying it. There is also some explicit sex. The setting is Southern California, a smaller town outside of Los Angeles. Much of it could only happen in Southern California where light jackets were all that was needed against the chill. People lived here to avoid the violence of big cities which was why the crimes were so much more shocking than they might otherwise have been. They lived in nice houses on neat streets. Their children behaved and tried to do well in school. Of course behind the facade things were vastly different. The plot is very well developed. There are red herrings trailed throughout the book, and the reader is tempted to fall for them. The twists and turns carry the reader along and keep her involved until the very end. There are still surprises to come. The denouement is satisfying and yet some questions remain. This book is a very quick read. I seemed to be holding my breath as I read it because things happened so fast and I knew more violence was going to occur and I wanted it stopped. It is a book I had trouble putting down. The title, by the way, is a reference to where the BSU was located at Quantico. It was sixty feet below the surface, thus ten times deeper than the dead are buried.
Reviewed by Sally A. Fellows, January 2010
[ Top ]
QUICK SEARCH:
Contact: Yvonne Klein (ymk@reviewingtheevidence.com)
[ About | Reviews | Search | Submit ]
[ Home ]
| 
