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My brother refers to me as "The Great Indoorsman." I take that as a compliment. My idea of camping is a room at Embassy Suites that doesn't carry BET, GAC or FNC on the cable and doesn't have a CD player in the room. Nature? That would be the strip between the parking lot and the hotel entrance. Hiking? The walk from the front desk to the room. Nope. Not into the outdoors.
The reason is simple: spiders. Try walking more than 20 yards into the woods or forest without bumping into a web and its builder. No, I'm not into it. And even though Lisa Gardner mentions nary an arachnid in her latest novel, THE KILLING HOUR, you have to know that they're there, just an inch or two off the page, as she leads you deeper and deeper off the beaten path and into rural Virginia. I'm glad she didn't bring them up; if this story had any more suspense, the book jacket would need a warning label affixed to it.
THE KILLING HOUR may remind you, very vaguely, of THE SILENCE OF THE LAMBS, but that is only because both books feature an overachieving female FBI recruit as the primary character. What is more significant for fans of Lisa Gardner, however, is that THE KILLING HOUR is a sequel of sorts to THE NEXT ACCIDENT. Kimberly Quincy, who survived the events of that fine book, is now at the FBI Academy and is causing a bit of a stir --- for all the wrong reasons. While she technically shows all of the makings of a fine agent, her people skills leave much to be desired. When Kimberly stumbles upon the body of a murder victim, literally at the back doorstep of the FBI's Quantico, Virginia headquarters, it has repercussions, not only for her but also for her father, Pierce Quincy, and his business partner and lover Rainie Conner. Pierce Quincy, a former FBI profiler, and Conner are brought into the case as consultants.
It is soon established, however, that the murder has similarities to a series of killings that took place several years before in Georgia. The Georgia murders involved a fiend who would kidnap pairs of young women and leave the body of one in a place where it would be discovered quickly, while leaving the other alive, but in a place of great peril. The murderer would leave clues to the location of the second victim with the first. There were eight victims...and then the kidnappings and the murders stopped. It now appears, however, that the murderer has changed location and begun again, only this time he has upped the ante.
Special Agent Michael McCormack, who tried unsuccessfully to solve the first series of murders, is drawn back into the investigation --- and incidentally, to Kimberly --- by a mysterious contact who seems to know what the killer will do, and when. The trail ultimately leads to a desperate and cataclysmic confrontation in Virginia's Dismal Swamp --- where nature can be more dangerous than any human killer.
Gardner sets up some interesting internal tension right out of the gate, giving the reader a protagonist that the reader can't quite like but sympathizes with nonetheless. Gardner doesn't pile the suspense on all at once, but adds to it gradually --- a murder here, a mystery there, a personal conflict or two --- until by the end of the book the reader feels like a bunch of raw nerves racing for the comfort of the finish line.
Gardner is a fine writer who gets better with every novel, and by changing the focus of each book among a cast of occasionally recurring characters --- Rainie Conner in THE THIRD VICTIM, Pierce Quincy in THE NEXT ACCIDENT, and now Kimberly Quincy in THE KILLING HOUR --- she lends an air of familiarity to each new novel while keeping her stories original and fresh. She will undoubtedly continue to be an author whose future novels will be eagerly anticipated.
--- Reviewed by Joe Hartlaub
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