The Competition

May 26, 2014
What could be worse than a Columbine-style school shooting? Rachel Knight finds out in Clark’s ticking time bomb of a thriller, the fourth in her series featuring the L.A. deputy DA (after 2013’s Blind Ambition). Called to suburban Fairmont High, the scene of the crime, by best friend Bailey Keller, “a top-notch detective in the elite Robbery-Homicide Division of the LAPD,” Knight finds that her presence may be far more than a formality when forensic evidence suggests that one or more of the mass murderers might have escaped. From there, the two women embark on a pedal-to-the-metal race to solve the case before there’s another massacre, all while trying to keep their efforts under the radar to avoid spooking their quarry or panicking the public. That a lone DA/detective team would have so much autonomy in such a high-profile investigation stretches credulity, but the twisty plot and dynamic duo make for a suspenseful, if sobering, page-turner. Agent: Dan Conaway, Writers House.

July 1, 2014
Ready for a fictionalized account of a mass shooting in a high school? Well, Clark is, though she comes a cropper in her attempt to rip another novel from headlines as painful as they are ubiquitous.At first, the massacre at Fairmont High seems to have followed a familiar script. The two masked gunmen, who started their shooting spree at a pep rally in the gym, roamed the halls, ducked into classrooms, murdered some 30 schoolmates and wounded many others, and ended up in the library, where their own bodies were found, balaclavas tossed aside, in an apparent mutual suicide. Unfortunately, the coroner tells LA Special Crimes prosecutor Rachel Knight and her buddy Detective Bailey Keller of the LAPD (Killer Ambition, 2013, etc.), the corpses weren't actually those of the killers, who remain at large. Confronted by a murderous pair obviously inspired by the massacre at Columbine High but clearly determined to surpass it, Rachel and Bailey can think of nothing better to do than start interviewing teachers, administrators and students, angering the shocked, defensive parents of anyone they even suggest might be involved. Meanwhile, the killers take their act to other venues and write Rachel taunting letters that sound exactly like the work of a high school student. The result is to invoke the horror of Columbine and other recent mass shootings while insisting that the perps, who clearly believe they're brilliant, come across as merely narcissistic, immature and hateful. Nor does it speak very highly of Rachel and Bailey that every suspect they think might be one of the shooters promptly ends up dead-end dead.An all-too-timely tale that makes you long for the day it'll be outdated. Just the thing for readers whose appetites for stories of mass shootings haven't been sated by the daily news.

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Starred review from June 1, 2014
In a horrific scene torn from the headlines, two masked gunmen massacre students and staff at a pep rally in the gym of their suburban L.A. high school. Two bodies found in the library, masks at their sides, are presumably the shooters, who committed mutual suicide. But it's soon apparent that the library scene was staged and the real shooters escaped, having not only exceeded Columbine's body count but also having walked away alive. And this is just the beginning, one of the shooters says in a letter to Deputy DA Rachel Knight (who achieved media prominence in a previous case); this is a competition in mass murder. So Knight and Detective Bailey Keller must work against the clock to find the killers, consulting with psychologists and dealing with parents who deny that their children could be perpetrators. It's a bone-wearying search, undertaken carefully with a future trial in mind, as seemingly good suspects turn out to be dead ends. Clark handles sometimes painfully raw scenes with great sensitivity and skillfully works in material about what makes a mass murderer, as she ratchets up suspense to a deadly conclusion. Her fourth legal thriller featuring Knight is another tour de force.(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2014, American Library Association.)