Bones
An Irene Kelly Mystery
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5.0 • 1 Rating
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- $24.99
Publisher Description
In this Edgar Allen Poe Award–winning novel, Irene Kelly is on the hunt for the body of a murder victim…with the killer as her guide: “a journey into the heart of darkness” (Los Angeles Times).
Only one person knows where Julia Sayre is: her killer. Four years ago, the young mother of two disappeared, a story that soon became a personal mission for reporter Irene Kelly. But despite Irene’s best efforts, the search for Julia proved fruitless.
Now on death row for unimaginable acts of torture and murder, inmate Nick Parrish makes a plea-bargain for a life sentence in exchange for leading investigators—and Irene—into the dark isolation of the Sierra Nevada mountains, where they will discover what really happened to Julia Sayre. But Parrish has other plans in mind.
From the start of the expedition, Parrish makes Irene the object of his unnerving attention. His knowing smile and relentless stares make her wonder if heavy chains, armed guards, and a protective search dog will be enough to keep him at bay. But Nick Parrish’s deadly plan to regain his freedom is already in motion, and Irene will need all her courage and ingenuity to remain the reporter—not the victim—in tomorrow’s headlines.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
In her seventh outing (after Liar, 1998), journalist Irene Kelly is part of the investigative team on the hunt for serial killer Nicholas Parrish's many victims. Their graves are in California's Sierra Nevada mountains, and Parrish, having entered a plea bargain, is there too, leading the team to the women's corpses in exchange for a life sentence instead of the death penalty. But Parrish has planned a surprise or two. When a grave explodes, most of the team are killed, Irene flees, and the killer escapes. Back home, Irene continues to work at the behest of Gillian Sayre, the daughter of one victim. Her hunt for Parrish is made considerably easier by his growing obsession with her. A cunning psychopath with a calm demeanor, Parrish heavily resembles Hannibal Lecter. Rather than eat his victims, however, he tortures and dismembers them. Burke spends the first third of the novel overbuilding Parrish's reputation, so by the time she actually depicts his depravity the horrors are a bit anticlimatic. Later, the killer's mysterious accomplice, "The Moth," will be too easily identified by readers, especially after Burke unsuccessfully labors to mask his/her gender. And Parrish is only generically, not memorably twisted. Though Irene and other characters are well wrought and realistic, too many red herrings are introduced, all meant to distract the reader from the true evil, which, once fully revealed, just isn't quite evil enough.
