Strong, inventive and a decided cut above standard police procedurals with well-drawn, intense characters and great plotting . . . a must.
Lt. Lou Boldt is still top cop in the ninth installment of Pearson's Seattle Police Department series. (Undercurrents; No Witnesses; etc.). This time the case involves Boldt's wife, Liz, who's weathered many a storm throughout her marriage: chemotherapy, a separation, the kidnapping of their daughter and now the revelation of her affair with David Hayes, a computer whiz at the bank where she's an executive. Hayes embezzled $17 million and went to jail, but now he's free and the never-recovered money has both cops and robbers interested in his whereabouts. Liz had nothing to do with the theft, but Russian mobster Gen. Yasmani Svengrad (known as the Sturgeon General because he's the head of a caviar importing company) thinks the money belongs to him, and she's the key to getting it back. It's all extremely complicated, but with the help of Sgt. John LaMoia and Boldt's former lover police, psychologist Daphne Matthews, who is now living with LaMoia, Boldt hopes not only to solve the case but to protect his wife's reputation and keep his marriage from foundering. The difficulty is that Boldt's personal problems, which mount to near soap opera levels, tend to distract from the more interesting crime elements. Pearson's uneven writing too often veers into the mawkish when attempting to reveal Boldt's inner feelings ("She touched him once lightly on the arm as he opened the door. The tenderness of that gesture cut him to his core and he felt emotions ripple through him"). Pearson wisely eschews the sentimentalism as he builds to a climactic finale in which Boldt cleverly manipulates friend and foe alike to save Liz and serve justice. (Apr. 5) FYI: Pearson is a real go-getter with a number of new projects on tap. He's writing a prequel to Peter Pan with Dave Barry, scripting a pilot that he hopes to sell to Showtime, has completed a documentary for The Animal Planet and still has time to tour with writer/rockers the Rockbottom Remainders. Copyright 2004 Reed Business Information.
"The latest Ridley Pearson book about Detective Lou Boldt is a fast-paced and exciting tale. Pearson has obviously done thorough and meticulous research into crime scenes and forensic science, creating a story any professional in the field would enjoy." (Donna J. Meade, Forensic Scientist II, Idaho State Police Forensic Services)
In Pearson's latest Detective Lou Boldt thriller, computer whiz David Hayes has embezzled $17 million from the bank where he worked and hidden it within the computer system. Now paroled for the crime, he wants to get the money and be free of all competing parties, including some utterly ruthless Russian Mafia types who will stop at nothing to get the loot. Years before, Hayes had an affair with Boldt's wife-now VP of systems at the bank-and he blackmails her into helping him recover the money. Though dedicated and skilled, Boldt and his team are human and fallible; Boldt must balance his jealousy as a husband with his professionalism as a detective. Pearson's novels are always well written, and he takes special care with richly drawn subordinate characters. Intriguing, exciting, and highly recommended for most popular fiction collections.-Robert Conroy, Warren, MI Copyright 2004 Reed Business Information.
A massive, long-dormant case of embezzlement bobs to the surface, spelling trouble for Seattle Lt. Lou Boldt (The Art of Deception, 2002, etc.) and his banker wife and nonstop suspense for their fans. Back when Liz Boldt allowed computer wizard David Hayes to seduce her, she didn't bargain on the sequel: He looted WestCorp, the Seattle bank she worked for, of $17 million that nobody's been able to trace to this day. Seattle's finest don't know where the money went, how Hayes hid it, or even where it came from. But now that Hayes has been paroled after serving five years for fraud, the case is back to haunt the Boldts. First, Lou is called to a fresh crime scene when Danny Foreman, the old friend from the Washington Bureau of Investigation who'd pushed hardest to close the case, is stunned and doped (and Danny's troubles are far from over). Then Liz is confronted, first with Hayes's unwelcome request for help, then with sordid evidence that her affair with Hayes could go public at any moment. In short order the Boldts are squeezed by a bunch of brutal, blackmailing bad guys headlined by Sturgeon General Yasmani Svengrad, a mafiya-connected importer; Lou's colleagues on the force, all of whom seem to be reading from different playbooks; Liz's bosses at the bank, whose impending merger sets a deadline for Hayes to recover the missing $17 million; and the elusive and unreadable David Hayes. The result is an impossibly tangled skein of double, triple, and quadruple crosses, as Lou and Liz struggle to keep their threatened marriage afloat by figuring out exactly which of their many demanding contacts they can trust to help to do what-and when they'll need to change plans at a moment's notice.Breathlessly exciting stuff, though impossible to follow in any detail either as it's going down or after it's over.
To catch a thief,” the saying goes, “you must think like a thief.” The ninth in the series featuring Seattle Police Lieutenant Lou Boldt demonstrates that notion and piles on a layer of thick, emotional pain, elevating what could have been a simple story into a catharsis for both the characters and the listener. Dick Hill maneuvers the facts of the takedown with aplomb but truly shines when expressing the emotional struggles of Lou and Elizabeth Boldt. Pearson continues to lead the way with a story that’s a cut above the average thriller. R.O. © AudioFile 2004, Portland, Maine
