The Night Monster

July 20, 2009
Spock-like logic and a bullet-train–paced plot drive Swain's third thriller to feature Florida PI Jack Carpenter (after Midnight Rambler
and Night Stalker
). When Carpenter fails to stop the brutal abduction of his daughter's college basketball teammate, he's painfully reminded of a serial abduction case he bungled 18 years before. Unearned guilt makes this latest case personal. Half-wit giant Lonnie and fellow inmate/mentor “Mouse” escape from an asylum for the criminally insane, and start seizing student nurses. Lonnie twice nearly kills Carpenter, once by tossing a 400-pound Coke machine at him. Carpenter's (and pooch Buster's) “dogged” search takes them to a small, eerie Florida townwhere the victims have been imprisoned. Bullets predictably fly when Carpenter's FBI friend, Ken Linderman, whose daughter has been abducted, pitches in to help. This installment grabs you by the throat and doesn't let go until the last page.

Abduction specialist Jack Carpenter hates bringing his work home with him, but when his daughter and her basketball teammates are kidnapped, he's left with no choice but to take it personally. Naturally, he recognizes the kidnapper from an old unsolved case, and the mystery that has haunted him all these years becomes entwined with the kidnapping. Narrator Peter Jay Fernandez delivers a reading as entertaining as it is effective. In Carpenter, Fernandez creates a character whom listeners can relate to but also hold in high esteem as an action hero. Without ever sounding too urgent or frantic, Fernandez layers his voice with subtle emotion that boils to the surface as the tension rises. L.B. (c) AudioFile 2009, Portland, Maine