Cari Mora
A Novel
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3.5 • 495 Ratings
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- $10.99
Publisher Description
A resilient young woman must outwit a sadistic psychopath in this pulse-pounding thriller from the author of The Silence of the Lambs, a "master still at the top of his strange and chilling form" (Wall Street Journal).
Twenty-five million dollars in cartel gold lies hidden beneath a mansion on the Miami Beach waterfront. Ruthless men have tracked it for years. Leading the pack is Hans-Peter Schneider. Driven by unspeakable appetites, he makes a living fleshing out the violent fantasies of other, richer men.
Cari Mora, caretaker of the house, has escaped from the violence in her native country. She stays in Miami on a wobbly Temporary Protected Status, subject to the iron whim of ICE. She works at many jobs to survive. Beautiful, marked by war, Cari catches the eye of Hans-Peter as he closes in on the treasure. But Cari Mora has surprising skills, and her will to survive has been tested before.
Monsters lurk in the crevices between male desire and female survival. No other writer in the last century has conjured those monsters with more terrifying brilliance than Thomas Harris. Cari Mora, his sixth novel, is the long-awaited return of an American master.
APPLE BOOKS REVIEW
Thomas Harris—the twisted genius who gave the world The Silence of the Lambs and its powerhouse protagonist, Clarice Starling—returns with another gasp-inducing thriller starring an unlikely heroine. Cari Mora, an immigrant housekeeper in Miami, is doing her best to keep a low profile, but that changes when a sickeningly amoral contractor discovers a trove of cartel cash hidden in the house Cari manages. It turns out that this formidable survivor can really hold her own…even when facing an evil adversary who’ll stop at nothing. Harris’ first book in more than a decade proves that he’s a true master of the cat-and-mouse game.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
In his first novel not centered on Hannibal Lecter in 44 years, bestseller Harris (The Silence of the Lambs) unveils a new villain, killer Hans-Peter Schneider, who rents a house in Miami Beach, Fla., that once belonged to Colombian drug kingpin Pablo Escobar in order to find the gold hidden beneath it. Cari Mora, a beautiful woman who survived a childhood as a conscript in FARC, the Colombian guerilla army, is the home's caretaker, and Schneider, to whom the "sound of a woman crying is... music" and who uses a liquid cremation machine to dispose of his prey, immediately regards her as a potential victim. When Schneider and Mora first meet, she catches a "whiff of brimstone off him." Few surprises mark the ensuing duel between the misogynistic sadist and the femme fatale, who learned certain skills from FARC that come in handy in their predictable showdown. The absence of Harris's usual superior storytelling will dismay fans, but the main problem is that Schneider doesn't come close to matching Lecter as a memorable monster. One can only hope for a return to form next time. (May
Customer Reviews
Review
This was worth reading but not as exceptional as expected. The violence and sadism seem contrived.
The characters are not fully realized. It’s as if it were not quite ready; an outline for a better effort.
Cari Mora
Disappointing 👎
Cari Mora
The lack of detail made this difficult to read. I made it to chapter 5 and gave up.