August 27, 2012
The talent that landed Lutz the Shamus Lifetime Achievement Award isn't evident in this crude serial killer yarn, the seventh featuring Frank Quinn, after 2011's Serial. As 2002's Hurricane Sophia bears down on Florida, Daniel Danielle, an androgynous murderer believed to have slaughtered over 100 women, escapes when the transport vehicle being used to move him to a maximum-security prison is overturned in the storm. The sole law enforcement officer to survive the crash insists that Danielle must have perished after fleeing the sceneâeither on account of his injuries or the raging gale. So when a woman turns up dead in New York City in 2008, Danielle doesn't surface as a suspectâeven though the victim bears his trademark mutilations; whoever butchered college student Macy Collins sliced off her breasts while she was still alive. Although Quinn has since left the NYPD, the veteran homicide detectiveâa maverick when it comes to "tracking serial killersâ" is drawn in by the sleazy police commissioner to solve the case before more blood is shed. But readers will likely deem that quota met early onâthe gratuitous violence disgusts more than it thrills, and the book's gratuitous length waters down whatever suspense Lutz does manage to conjure.