Split

PUBLISHERS WEEKLY 22 MAY 2006

In her second U.S. release, Australian crime novelist Moss sends her heroine, model and aspiring forensic psychologist Makedde Vanderwall, to a Vancouver campus, where a psychopath is picking off female students. The campus is also the site of a convention on psychopaths, which has drawn the world's best profilers including Mak's old flame, Det. Andy Flynn. It's been a year since the events of Moss's Fetish, in which Flynn saved Mak from a killer, but Mak refuses to reconsider Flynn, even after her current boyfriend begins acting suspiciously. As the body count rises, Flynn (backed by the experts conveniently assembled for the conference) tries to stop the killer before he gets to Mak. Despite the contrived setup (heard the one about the serial killer at the profiler's convention?), Moss handles her subject easily and expertly, making her novel both immersive and believable. Though readers who haven't read Fetish may be confused by references to the Stiletto Killer and the death of Mak's mother, those with a strong stomach and a taste for violence and who don't mind the occasional clunker ("Yikes. What's gotten into me?") should be sucked in by this sexy, smart thriller.