The stolen hours

Lila Nash, the heroine of this tense thriller from Edgar finalist Eskens (the Max Rupert series), is poised to land her dream job as a prosecutor for Hennepin County (Minnesota) once she passes the bar. But Lila has a secret that threatens to undo her: eight years earlier she was drugged and attacked while attending a party in high school, an attack so brutal it led to her being institutionalized and estranged from those who care about her. Meanwhile, photographer Gavin Spencer, a serial killer, has identified his latest victim, Sadie Vauk, a bridesmaid who slighted him at a wedding where he recently worked. When Sadie survives Gavin's attempt to kill her, she's able to identify him because of his severe speech impediment. Soon, Lila is forced to face her own demons as she matches wits with Gavin while building a case against him. In the end, readers may wish Gavin had proven to be a more formidable adversary than he turns out to be, but the plot provides satisfying twists and poses thought-provoking questions about gender. Eskens reliably entertains. Agent: Amy Cloughley, Kimberley Cameron & Assoc. (Sept.)

A law clerk still battling demons from her past must rise to dizzying heights in preparing a case against a serial sex killer. Lila Nash has never truly recovered from her rape when she was 18. She's cut herself, tried to kill herself, spent years in therapy, powered her way through law school, and landed a plum entry-level job with the Hennepin County Attorney's Office despite the fact that Frank Dovey, the new prosecutor, has hated Lila ever since she and her law school mentor, professor Boady Sanden, embarrassed him in court. Now Andi Fitch, the aggressive prosecutor to whom Dovey has assigned Lila as an assistant in the serene confidence that she'll fail, presses her to make the case against wedding photographer Gavin Spencer, who's accused of assaulting and nearly killing bridesmaid Sadie Vauk. Spencer, a serial predator who plans and executes his murderous assaults meticulously and has a special gift for seeing around curves and destroying the evidence that might incriminate him, is a ruthless antagonist. As Eskens demonstrates, however, he's cut from the same cloth as Frank Dovey, whose bloodless campaign against Lila is every bit as unscrupulous. Even readers who predict the tale's biggest twist before it arrives will still have the breath knocked out of them by the surprises that follow. And they'll all cheer when fragile Lila finally gains the strength to stand up to the oppressors in her life and wrestle it back from them. A rousing legal thriller that's also an acute study of female victimization and male privilege. Copyright (c) Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.