Berkley Prime Crime (Hardcover), ISBN 0-425-19201-6

Jack McMorrow works as the Maine stringer for The New York Times. He initially left his desk job with the paper to escape the pressures of cutting-edge journalism. However, his semi-retirement from the fray hardly isolates him from high-profile crime cases, as becomes obvious in this, the latest addition to Gerry Boyle's series about Jack and his significant other, social worker Roxanne Masterson.

Roxanne brings Jack his latest case. The daughter of the powerful, wealthy, Kennedy-esque David and Maddie Connelly, displays suspicious bruises. Could the child be a victim of child abuse?

Jack tags along when Roxanne goes to interview the family. The couple gets drawn into the Connellys' social circle, meeting various staff members of the Connellys' charitable foundation. A few days later, Jack goes to a crime scene and recognizes the victim as Angel Moretti, a sex bomb temptress and, apparently, manipulating cocktease whom he met during a Connelly gathering. As he tries, with Roxanne's assistance, to track down the killer Jack finds himself both threatened by hoodlums and cooperated with by the Connellys.

But are the Connellys all that they seem? Are they genuinely cooperating? For all that they blame a sacked and now conveniently disappeared nanny, could it be that they inflicted those bruises on their daughter? Can Jack do his job as a reporter and, at the same time, protect the Connellys from unjustified public attention? Is the mob involved? And why does Maddie Connelly -- the woman with everything -- seem scared of her own shadow?

Jack sets about finding the answers to these question -- aware all the time that the killer may be closer to Roxanne and himself than he thinks.

The combination of mystery and thriller is not always easy to achieve. Ratiocination and action thrill offer two different forms of excitement. But Boyle makes a very good fist of it in this novel. The final fifty pages or so prove as compulsive as anything you'll find in any edge-of-your-chair thriller. I found one major "cheat" in the ratiocination aspect of the tale, which naturally, I can't detail here. Aside from that, however, Pretty Dead stands as a good detective novel as well as an effective thriller.

Boyle succeeds with his characterizations. For the most part, one gets the impression of a growing acquaintance with his characters over the course of the book. (The portrayal of the victim is especially vivid.)

In addition, the book offers nice writing that escapes prissiness, plus some good one-liners. So why only the three stars? Partly because of the "cheat" mentioned above, and partly because the novel doesn't quite succeed in capturing the atmosphere of its locations. This reader didn't get the feel of either rural Maine or Boston, the book's principal settings. That of course, doesn't matter too much if everything else works well; but it does render Pretty Dead less lingering than it might have been.

John Grant

John Grant/Paul Barnett is author of over 60 books, Consultant Editor to AAPPL and US Reviews Editor of Infinity Plus. His most recent novels are The Far-Enough Window, from BeWrite, and The Dragons of Manhattan, currently being serialized in Argosy. His collaboration with artist Bob Eggleton, Dragonhenge, nominated for a 2003 Hugo Award, was followed in 2005 by The Stardragons. His most recent major nonfiction is The Chesley Awards: A Retrospective, with Elizabeth Humphrey and Pamela D. Scoville. His story collection Take No Prisoners was released by Willowgate Press in August 2004. He has won the Hugo (twice), World Fantasy Award, Locus Award, Chesley Award, Mythopoeic Society Award, J. Lloyd Eaton Award, and a rare British Science Fiction Association Special Award. He is married to Pamela D. Scoville, Director of the Animation Art Guild; they live in New Jersey with four cats and not enough bookshelves.

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