The Face-Changers (Jane Whitefield Series #4)

by Thomas Perry

Overview

Jane Whitefield must outsmart a savvy doppelganger in this suspense novel of “dazzling ingenuity” (The New York Times Book Review) from the award-winning author of The Butcher’s Boy.

“The Face-Changers is brilliantly plotted and stylishly executed. Thomas Perry is a true original.”—Jonathan Kellerman

Jane Whitefield, legendary half-Native American shadow guide who spirits hunted people away from certain death, has never had a client like Dr. Richard Dahlman. A famous plastic surgeon who has dedicated his life to healing, the good doctor hasn’t a clue why stalkers are out for his blood. But he knows Jane Whitefield’s name—and that she is his only hope. Once again Jane performs her magic, leading Dahlman in a nightmare flight across America, only a heartbeat ahead of pursuers whose leader is a dead ringer for Jane: a raven-haired beauty who has stolen her name, reputation, and techniques—not to save lives, but to destroy them. . . .

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780307781369
Publisher:	Random House Publishing Group
Publication date:	02/16/2011
Series:	Jane Whitefield Series , #4
Sold by:	Random House
Format:	eBook
Pages:	432
File size:	2 MB

About the Author

Thomas Perry was born in Tonawanda, New York, and received a B.A. from Cornell University and a Ph.D. from the University of Rochester. He has been a laborer, maintenance man, commercial fisherman, weapons mechanic, university administrator and teacher, and television writer and producer. His previous Jane Whitefield novels are Dance for the Dead, Vanishing Act, and Shadow Woman. He is also the author of The Butcher's Boy, which received an Edgar Award from the Mystery Writers of America, and other novels. Thomas Perry lives in Southern California with his wife and two daughters.
New York Times bestselling author Thomas Perry won an Edgar Award for The Butcher’s Boy, and Metzger’s Dog was one of the New York Times’s Notable Books of the Year. His other books include The Face-Changers, Shadow Woman, Dance for the Dead, and Vanishing Act. Thomas Perry died in 2025.

Read an Excerpt

Janet McAffee stepped out of the Baltimore Medical Center and winced as the icy air coming off the Inner Harbor lacerated her cheeks and forehead. Her eyes began to water as she lowered her head and searched for the taxi cab. At one time she would have called the sensation pain, but that was before she had learned what pain was. The chemical peel had only left her skin feeling tender and exposed, the way a sore tooth would feel if she drank iced tea.
 
The part of the makeover that had taken her by surprise was the liposuction. That had been the only part of the process that she had been secretly looking forward to, because it seemed like cheating away all the days she had convinced herself she was too busy to exercise and too hungry to turn down dessert. But the liposuction had cost her a week of hot, fiery misery before she had felt like moving again. Because they had sucked most of the fat from the places that a person rested on, stillness had not offered much relief. The doctors never told you that. Instead they drew lines on a photograph of your face to show you how clever the cut-and-stitch surgery was going to be. The mild discomfort from that was already half-forgotten and the scars were almost invisible.
 
She spotted the taxi cab parked beside the curb just outside the parking barrier, where the driver had stopped so he wouldn’t have to pull a ticket from the machine to come into the lot. She resolved to be more specific next time she ordered a cab. She squared her shoulders and prepared to step away from the shelter of the big medical building into the wind. She felt a hand touch her elbow and shrank from it, tightening her muscles to clamp her arm to her side.
 
Janet whirled. A tall, thin woman with long black hair was standing beside her, looking into her eyes. The woman seemed to note her startled reaction, but it seemed neither to surprise nor particularly worry her. She said quietly, “Go back into the building and wait for me just inside the door.”
 
“But that’s my cab. I was just on my way—”
 
The woman interrupted. “Didn’t they tell you I would come for you? It’s time.” Her eyes betrayed a small glint of amusement as she watched Janet’s face.
 
Janet sensed a sudden weakness in her arms and legs. They felt heavy, but somehow empty, as though there were no bones. “All right,” she said.
 
She stepped back in and watched through the glass door as the new woman walked up to the driver, said something to him, gave him some money, and stepped back to watch him wheel out and drive away. She turned and walked across the driveway and through the door, then kept going past Janet without looking at her. After five paces, she stopped, turned, and said, “This is it. If you’re coming, come now.”
 
Janet nodded and took a step. She could not help wondering if this single step was one of those enormous ones, like a step off the railing of a ship, but then she reminded herself that this wasn’t like that at all. She had taken that step months ago, on the night when she had decided to make the telephone call. She had been busy preparing for this day for a long time—first quietly moving out of the condominium into the small apartment where everything was unlisted and nobody but the police knew she lived there, then enduring the makeover. This was only the next step, not the first.
 
She followed the tall, dark woman down the hallway and out the front door, then to a small green car that looked a lot like the one that Janet had owned until—No, she didn’t want to follow her memory backward. This was a new beginning.
 
Janet got into the passenger seat and closed the door just as it began to move. The woman accelerated away from the curb and into traffic, then moved quickly into the next lane, then turned, turned again, and headed east. She was not exactly a reckless driver, but she was aggressive and sure, and those were qualities that made Janet uneasy.
 
Janet said, “I didn’t think you would come for me here.”
 
“That’s why I did,” said the dark woman. Then she seemed to change, as though she had thought about it and decided that there was no practical reason not to be friendly. “Everyone who has been wondering if you might try to disappear assumes that you’ll do it in certain ways. What they’re waiting for is to see you some night slinking out of your condo carrying a suitcase. Nobody disappears from a doctor’s office.” She glanced at Janet. “How did it go, by the way?”
 
Janet shrugged. “He says I’m doing great. I’m not supposed to see him again for six months.”
 
“He did a wonderful job on you. Big improvement.”
 
“Thank you,” she said mechanically. It was a shock that this woman, who seemed so strange, would say something as normal and human as an empty compliment. “How do you know? We’ve never met before.”
 
“I’ve seen a lot of pictures of you.” She made another turn. “What have other people said? Has anyone who knew you before the surgery seen you since?”
 
Janet shook her head. “I’m a little low on the invitation list lately, and I didn’t go out at all while my face still made people stare. The doctors and nurses are the only ones. And cab drivers.”
 
The woman swung into a covered parking ramp, went up two levels, then stopped in an empty space and turned off the engine.
 
“Why are we stopping?”
 
“I need to give you some things.” She reached into her purse and produced a ticket in an airline envelope. “Your flight leaves in two hours.”
 
“Where am I going?” She pulled aside the corner of the envelope and read the ticket. “Chicago?”
 
“You’ll be there for a while, but it’s just a stop on the way. It will keep you out of sight until your plastic surgery is completely healed. You should show up at your final destination looking like a finished product—face, body, hair, wardrobe, credentials.”
 
She handed Janet a small wallet that was stiff with cards. “Here’s your ID.”
 
Janet looked at the MasterCard on top. “Mary Anders. Is that going to be my name?”
 
“Just for this trip. You’ll need to flash identification to get on the plane. If something goes wrong or you’re stalled, you can’t even get a room without a credit card. Use those.”
 
Janet looked at the driver’s license. The picture was the one she’d taken in a photo booth a week ago, but it had been touched up. It looked to her as though someone had scanned it into a computer and adjusted the color and texture to hide the surgery. She gazed at the picture. It was a young, pretty woman, but it was still her face. Maybe she would look like that after everything healed, and it made her hopeful again. She put the wallet in her purse with the ticket.
 
“Now let’s have yours.”
 
“Mine? What?”
 
“Your license, credit cards, and so on. Whatever you have with Janet McAffee written on it has to go.”
 
“Oh, of course,” she said. It had not occurred to her that she would have to lose things that took so little space. But of course she did. The dark woman watched impatiently while she took out her wallet, removed her driver’s license, stared at it for a second as though she were saying good-bye to it, and set it down on the seat beside her.
 
“You’d better give me the whole thing. There’s nothing in there that you’re going to need.”
 
“But what about later?”
 
The dark woman looked at her sympathetically and patted her arm. “I wish we had more time together right now, before you get on that plane, so I could help you through the hard parts. I really do. This has all been done before, and there’s a right way. We don’t know how long it’s going to take for things in Baltimore to improve. It might be that those men will get caught trying to put a bomb in your condo tonight, or try to hire an outside killer who is really an undercover cop. Stranger things have happened. But you have to be prepared to wait a long time, and that means doing everything as though it were for keeps. It’s not that much harder.”

What People are Saying About This

From the Publisher

"The momentum never flags, and the suspense constantly builds." —-Booklist Starred Review

Editorial Reviews

Dr. Carey McKinnon, the risk-aversive bridegroom who'd made Jane Whitefield promise to stop the hazardous career of helping people vanish ("Shadow Woman", 1997, etc.) now begs her to take his old mentor on the lam—plunging her into her most convoluted, if not exactly her most involving, caper. The police in two states don't have any doubts that eminent surgeon Dr. Richard Dahlmann murdered his equally eminent colleague, Dr. Sarah Hoffman—which is exactly why he needs to go underground, Carey tells Jane, while the case sorts itself out. But no sooner has Jane spirited Dahlmann out of the hospital where a police-pursuit bullet landed him—no mean feat, especially considering his weakened condition and the security cordon thrown around him—than she realizes that Dahlmann is just whistling in the dark in waiting for the cops to suddenly come to their senses. He's in a frame tight enough to cause serious weight loss—a frame that can only be the work of professionals (presumably the two armed men she passed on their way to Dahlmann's hospital bed) as good at their jobs as Jane is at hers. Why has Dahlmann been the target of such an elaborate campaign? The answer leads Jane not only to a series of three earlier murders nobody had even suspected, but to a ring of "face-changers"—people who, like Jane herself, are dedicated to helping people vanish, though they're a lot less scrupulous about their motives and tactics and selection of clients. In order to vindicate Dahlmann (and get guileless Carey off an impending charge of accessory to murder for helping him escape), Jane will have to stop her furious criss-crossing of the 48 states long enough to unmask thecopycats, get evidence of their criminal complicity, and stay one step ahead of her hundreds of pursuers. If this all sounds suspenseful, it is. But it's also tangled, unevenly paced (though endlessly inventive), and ultimately as exhausting for Perry's loyal fans as for his resourceful, long-suffering heroine.

Kirkus Reviews

Terrific . . . dazzling ingenuity.”—The New York Times Book Review

“The Face-Changers is brilliantly plotted and stylishly executed. Thomas Perry is a true original.”—Jonathan Kellerman

“Perry is a master at nail-biting suspense. I stayed up until three in the morning to reach the surprising denouncement and get my blood pressure back to normal.”—Los Angeles Times

“The momentum never flags, and the suspense constantly builds. . . . The Face-Changers could serve as a textbook on how to construct an elaborate plot that, like a Swiss watch, never lets its complex underpinnings overshadow its elegant appearance.”—Booklist, starred review

“Heart-stopping suspense.”—Library Journal

“Thomas Perry has created a fascinating heroine in Jane Whitefield, who is not only quick on her feet but savvy and compassionate. . . . The Face-Changers is a lot of fun, and if you ever want to escape the mundane for a while you couldn't do better than have Jane Whitefield as your guide.”—Orlando Sentinel

From the Publisher

The momentum never flags, and the suspense constantly builds.”

Booklist (starred review)

PErry is a master at nail-biting suspense. I stayed up until three in the morning to reach the surprising denouement and get my blood pressure back to normal.”

|Los Angeles Times

Terrific…Dazzling ingenuity.”

New York Times Book Review

The momentum never flags, and the suspense constantly builds.

Booklist Starred Review