Marie L. (fencerchica) reviewed on 12/6/2011 + 47 more book reviews

Ms. King keeps the emotional and suspensful tension wound up tightly in this installment of Detective Kate Martinelli's ongoing adventures in crime-solving and love. There's a lot going on here, but King's brisk writing manages to balance vivid detail with a crisp, clear narrative. Her cranky, faithful heroine is easy to feel for as she struggles to piece her life back together without her absent lover. Kate's experiences in the present as she tries to hold down the empty fort are interposed with flashbacks to the events leading up to her lover's departure to convalesce on her own after being greviously wounded in a previous adventure. Kate, however, isn't allowed to mope around on her own for long before a young friend of hers drags her out of her cave, desperate for help over the disappearance of a tragic young homeless boy. In the course of searching for the missing child on behalf of his only friend, Kate may end up finding herself more friendless than she's ever been before.

One detail that struck me was how, when one of Kate's dearest friends reveals that instead they are a vicious and back-stabbing enemy, the final resolution of this conflict is left quite ambiguous. Sadly, I think an ambiguous tailing off probably reflects real life pretty well, but since this is after all fiction, I'm left wondering what sort of details will be filled in later on. Will this foe persist into the future, will a final confrontation/resolution occur, or could that particular story line be allowed to drop? Given Ms. King's refreshing precision, I doubt the latter...

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