Quarry's return

Retired hit man Quarry returns to the killing business with ruthless efficiency in the highly satisfying 17th entry in Collins's crime series (after Quarry's Blood). When a journalist shows up at Quarry's door searching for his daughter, bestselling true crime author Susan Breedlove, Quarry senses trouble. Predictably, the reporter turns out to be a hired assassin, and his expert knife skills make him more than a match for the 71-year-old ex-killer. Fortunately, Quarry's former lover Luann Lloyd, who he believed was dead, arrives in the nick of time to rescue him. But Quarry's daughter is far from safe; evidence suggests she's been abducted while investigating a series of cold case murders, forcing Quarry to return to Port City, Iowa, where he met Susan's mother and left contract killing, and where Susan had been conducting research. With Luann's help, Quarry begins his own investigation into the killings Susan was writing about, in the belief that exposing the culprit will lead him to her. The fluid narration is better than ever, and Collins brings the proceedings to an exhilarating and unexpected conclusion. Fans will hope Quarry returns again soon. (Nov.)

Retired contract killer Quarry--don't call him a hit man--gets pulled back into the ring by someone who's stirred up even more trouble than he has: his adult daughter. Like her father, Susan Breedlove has written a string of true-crime books, but they've been much more successful than his. Susan has just left after a Christmas Day visit with her father, who's only recently learned of her existence, when Quarry is menaced by a knife-wielding fake reporter who's come calling to kill him, or maybe just to squeeze money out of him. Female assassin Lu Petersen returns from her own rumored death just in time to save Quarry's bacon, and shortly thereafter they discover that Susan never made it home. The first half of their search for the missing author is standard franchise fare: the deadly duo confronts several contract killers--sometimes at their instance, sometimes at the other guys'--and walk away from each encounter hungry for the next. Once they establish that Susan's latest subject was the perpetrator of Iowa's "Cheerleader Murders," the tale settles into a very different, but equally familiar, groove: Quarry and Lu patrol the area questioning variously obliging local police officers and suspects, with special attention to bad-boy trucking heir Christopher Lowe, hoping against hope that retracing Susan's steps in the search for the triple murderer will turn her up still alive along the way. "I've always been a softie," the eponymous protagonist confides in his once-again partner in sex and crime. Yeah, right. Copyright (c) Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.