Void moon

Life has dealt Cassie Black a very poor hand. Her father simply abandoned the family for the Las Vegas casinos. Attempting to rob a high roller, Max, the love of Cassie's life, plunged from a casino penthouse through a glass ceiling. Through a quirk in Nevada law and the casinos' desire to make an example of someone, Cassie, an accomplice in the attempted robbery, was convicted of manslaughter in Max's death. Now on parole, Cassie is trying to stay straight and live with the torments of her past. Ultimately, she fails and agrees to rob another high roller at the same casino where Max died. But the mark turns out to be a Mob bagman, and Cassie is soon on the run from a psychopathic pit bull of a private eye employed by the casino. Cassie is damaged but tough and resilient--a wonderfully engaging character. Jack Karch, the pit bull, is not only a chilling sicko, he's also an incredibly skilled investigator. Casino boss Victor Grimaldi is spectacularly reptilian. Lesser characters are very finely drawn, too. Connelly really does his homework: Cassie's criminal tradecraft--and the casinos' security systems--will fascinate crime fans. And the pacing of this thriller is as good as you'll find in the genre. Void Moon offers readers a full house of entertainment. Bet on it. --Thomas Gaughan

Even though Harry Bosch is nowhere to be found, Connelly has written his best book to date. In the past, Connelly's leads have been in law enforcement. His new protagonist, Cassie Black, is an ex-con who needs to make one more score in order to fulfill the dream that sustained her in prison. The first part of the novel follows a Mission Impossible-style crime. Something happens during this caper that propels the rest of the book as Cassie is relentlessly pursued by Jack Karch, a ruthless investigator for a casino who leaves no witnesses alive. Cassie has a secret that she will protect at all costs, and while this secret is obvious, other aspects of this fast-paced thriller are surprising indeed. In astrology, a void moon is considered bad luck, but Connelly's Void Moon is better than a four-leaf clover. Highly recommended. [Previewed in Prepub Alert, LJ 9/15/99.]ÄJeff Ayers, Seattle P.L. (c) Copyright 2010. Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.

She's a thief, he's a killer, and two and a half million dollars is the issue between them in this dark (and sometimes dreary) thriller. Series hero Harry Bosch (Angel's Flight, 1998, etc.) is on hiatus, and you'll keep missing him. Not that there aren't rewards in this story of not-so-good versus evil. There's Cassie Black, for instance (amoral, yes, yet appealingly vulnerable)'a young ex-con who never saw the Vegas high-roller she couldn't rob. And though her r‚sum‚ shows 5 to 15, the fall was only minimally her fault. Mostly, it was Jack Karch's fault. Karch, a self-congratulatory psychopath, is a casino security agent who moonlights for the mob. Hired to set a trap for Cassie's larcenous lover, he netted Cassie as well, though only because she couldn't bear to escape. Years have passed. Cassie's done her time, tried to go straight, failed. She needs ``the outlaw juice,'' she's discovered, her phrase for the sense of danger that kick-starts and defines her life force. She also needs the money. One last score, she tells herself. Now the scene shifts from L.A. to Las Vegas and the Cleopatra Casino, where a mark on an extended hot streak has been pre-selected for her. She does the job, then finds, to her astonishment, that the take is not the comfortable $250,000 predicted, but a scary $2.5 mil. It's mob money, she guesses unhappily. What she can't guess is how quickly Karch (Jack of Spades, they call him, because he likes to digs graves for those he hits) will be sent after it and her. Weird Jack admires lovely Cassie, respects her skill and resourcefulness, and will kill her in a Vegas minute if he has to. She makes him try. Lesser Connelly: Interesting characters, incident aplenty, but overplotting undermines the mano-a-womano center.