Review by Booklist Review
Jake Reese thought he had put his troubled past behind him. Then two men violently attack him in the parking lot of a bar and cut off his finger. Suddenly, his quiet existence as a writing teacher at a small college looks to be in jeopardy. He has just married the love of his life, and they live in a beautiful Tudor not far from campus. Jack doesn't want to believe that the peacefulness he has worked so hard to create could disappear in an instant, but the police are not exactly inspiring confidence that the assailants will be caught. Despite his better instincts, Jake is seriously thinking of reaching out to the hard-core criminal who mentored him as a young man and, he is convinced, would find the culprits ASAP. In his third novel (after The Grove, 2010), Rector keeps his plot churning and his prose lean in a narrative that contains both riveting forward momentum and an unsettling view of marriage and friendship. The writing is ever so stylish, and the characters are deeply flawed an irresistible combination.--Wilkinson, Joanne Copyright 2010 Booklist
From Booklist, Copyright (c) American Library Association. Used with permission.
Review by Library Journal Review
In Rector's third novel (after The Grove and The Cold Kiss), newly hired young English professor Jake Reese and his wife, an art buyer, have been married only a month, and there is a great deal they don't know about each other's past-to a dangerous extent. When two thugs attack Jake and cut off his ring finger, he is horrified and bewildered, finally seeking help from a foster uncle with apparent mob connections. Further death threats confuse him, and then his wife dies in a car accident. When Jake discovers she had connections to his own imprisoned father, he realizes the threats may have something to do with her. More developments come to light, involving diamonds, hijacking, betrayals, and murder. VERDICT The suspense and plot twists are gripping. While the first-person, present-tense narration and oddly unsatisfying ending give the work a pulp-fiction air, it also has that genre's appealing raw action, cliff-hanging chapter endings, and graphic, cinematic drama. In spite of its flaws, this one is hard to put down.-Roland Person, formerly with Southern Illinois Univ. Lib., Carbondale (c) Copyright 2011. Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.
(c) Copyright Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.
