Hand of Evil
A Novel of Suspense
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- USD 13.99
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- USD 13.99
Descripción editorial
New York Times bestselling author J.A. Jance returns with her “compelling…satisfying” (USA TODAY) third novel in the gripping suspense series featuring ex-television journalist Ali Reynolds.
With his hand trapped in the door of a speeding car, a man struggles to remain upright as he’s dragged along a deserted stretch of San Juan Road in Phoenix’s South Mountain Preserve. It’s the perfect place to drive a man to his grave—literally. Starting with a crime so gruesome even prowling coyotes keep their distance from the remains, a killer begins crisscrossing the Southwest on a spree of grisly murders.
A hundred miles away, Ali Reynolds is grieving. The news-casting job she once delighted in is gone—and so is the philandering husband she once loved and thought she knew. When a member of the family who gave Ali a generous scholarship decades earlier suddenly asks her for a meeting, Ali wonders what it can mean. Before she can satisfy her curiosity, though, Ali receives another startling call: a friend’s teenage daughter has disappeared. Ali offers to help. But in doing so, she unknowingly begins a quest that will reveal a deadly ring of secrets, at the center of which stand two undiscriminating killers.
Hand of Evil is Jance at her best, weaving a masterful “literary jigsaw puzzle” (The Tennessean, Nashville) and story of suspense that travels over generations, exposing two very different women with the same horrifying secret. Will Ali become a victim herself, or will she escape from a deadly deceit that no amount of security—financial or emotional—can cover up?
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Jance keeps former L.A. TV news anchor Ali Reynolds in her native Arizona for her third lead appearance (following Web of Evil). Ali, still recovering from the murder of her not-quite-ex-husband, is aided by her parents and her old high school chum, newly divorced detective and marine reservist Dave Holman. Meanwhile, wealthy, reclusive Arabella Ashcroft, whose family's college scholarship program supported Ali as an undergrad, has read Ali's grief-filled blog, cutlooseblog.com, and wants Ali's help in writing an incest memoir: elderly Arabella says that her childhood was despoiled by a late stepbrother, Bill, and that she's being threatened by his son should she go through with writing about it. Soon after, Dave's daughter Crystal disappears from the Las Vegas home of his ex- and her new husband; Dave seeks Ali's counsel before barreling out there. Jance crowds the book with subplots, and her characters air a lot of opinions about sexual abuse and health care. But sparks between Ali and Dave and an upbeat ending keep this latest Ali outing on track.
