A Mourning in Autumn
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5.0 • 1 Rating
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- $10.99
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- $10.99
Publisher Description
NYPD homicide detective Lieutenant Jimmy Sakura is back as he faces a series of gruesome murders.
In the back alleys of New York City, the latest in a series of murders is more disturbing than anything detective Lieutenant Jimmy Sakura has ever seen: women ritually executed in the most brutal way possible. Not only must Sakura delve into the disturbing recesses of his mind where the tools for this kind of investigation lurk, but he must conceal this agonizing work from his wife Hanae who has only just recovered from the wounds-physical and mental-that she suffered at the hands of Jimmy's last quarry. With no one to rely on, and faced with his worst nightmare, Sakura threatens to bend under the strain as he seeks out the self-styled "Eater of Souls" and risks pushing himself far beyond the point of no return.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
In Moore's second gruesome outing for NYPD homicide detective James Sakura (after 2003's A Cruel Season for Dying), a serial killer is preying on young Manhattan women. He suffocates them, surgically rearranges their internal organs to form a kind of mirror image, then dumps their bodies in the trash. But as Sakura, partner Michael Darius and forensic psychiatrist Wilhelmina French try to untangle the meaning of this ritualistic violence, the killer shifts gears, murdering Darius's ex-wife and kidnapping their twin toddlers. Readers looking for a motive for the killer's psychopathology may be disappointed, as throughout the novel he remains an unfathomable monster. Both detectives are interesting, especially Sakura with his Zen-like detachment and dogged determination. Another clever conceit is his Japanese wife Hanae blind but gifted with a kind of New Age vision but she functions too much as part of Sakura's backstory (she played a larger role in A Cruel Season for Dying). The other characters are essentially stock the acerbic coroner, the ambitious TV crime reporter, a few potential suspects. The pieces of the genre puzzle are all here, but the whole is less than the sum of the parts.
