The Ties That Bind
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- $2.99
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- $2.99
Publisher Description
A high-caliber police procedural mystery from the acclaimed author Warren Adler, well-known for the iconic novel turned international box-office hit "The War of the Roses"
Rumors are abuzz at the Supreme Court that an associate justice has a not-so-secret sadomasochistic fetish. When Metropolitan Police detective Fiona Fitzgerald is called in to investigate the city’s latest gruesome murder that involves S&M, she is forced to look at these rumors—and face her own painful memories.
But when Fiona discovers a connection between an old acquaintance and the dead girl, she is determined to prove that the secrets of sexual aberration and the fear of exposure are the driving factors of this murder. As her personal drive to make peace with her past collides with criminal sexual conduct, Fiona finds herself in harm’s way. Is her desire for revenge impairing the investigation?
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
Adler's newest mystery featuring Washington, D.C., cop Fiona FitzGerald, last seen in The Witch of Watergate , is a forceful story sandwiched between a sanctimonious start and a sensationalized ending. The death of a young woman found bound and sexually abused in a hotel room spurs Fiona and her new partner, the statuesque, African American Gail Prentiss, to a chapter of female commiseration. Like Fiona and Gail, the dead woman was socially connected and drop-dead beautiful. The manner of death leads the puritanical Gail to a young lawyer known to lean towards rough sex. But the killing strikes a deeper emotion in Fiona, as the graffiti-adorned body of the girl bears a striking resemblance to her own flesh following a kinky session with her former lover Farley Lipscomb, who is now a Supreme Court Associate Justice. Although the list of suspects is scant, Adler deftly blends in other plot ingredients; now deeply ambivalent about submissive/dominant sex, Fiona's desire for revenge against Farley impairs both her partnership with Gail and the investigation. The blockbuster ending, although prepared for by the earlier whips-and-chains material, has an exaggerated, comics-like tone, leaving this tale flawed in the places that count the most in crime fiction.
