Beyond Recognition

February 2, 1997
A rag and a bone are literally all the Seattle PD has to work with after a violent fire consumes a home and its helpless female occupant, a divorced mother. When a second victim dies the same way, detective Lou Boldt (Chain of Evidence, etc.) and police psychologist Daphne Matthews (both Pearson regulars) begin the process of profiling a serial killer who uses rocket fuel to torch women because they resemble his mother. Elsewhere, a young boy named Ben, whose abusive stepfather has all but driven him into the street, has been befriended by a fraudulent "psychic" named Emily Richland, who hires Ben to scout her clients' vehicles while they're meeting with her. This task leads, in the novel's best scene, to Ben witnessing an exchange of cash for rocket fuel, a sighting that in turn eventually takes the police to their killer. Much of the plot teeters on the coincidental nature of all these connections, and on the unlikely bits of evidence used to corner the suspect (e.g., a ladder's impressions left on backyard grass). The intricate forensics that have driven so many of Pearson's novels are largely missing here, and secondary characters are sketched quickly and without depth. Even Boldt and Matthews have lost their shine, bickering a lot while insisting that they love one another, while Boldt's long-suffering wife, Liz, is discarded in cruel fashion. But no doubt the Boldt-Matthews team will be back, hopefully to solve cases less confusing and farfetched than this one. Major ad/promo; author tour.

January 1, 1997
Fans of award-winning thriller writer Pearson take note: Seattle Police Sergeant Lou Boldt is back, battling a scholar-arsonist who vaporizes his victims in hotter-than-hot house fires. Equally dangerous and about to blow is the smoldering romance between Boldt, who's drifting away from his wife, and police department psychologist Daphne Matthews. Pearson masterfully depicts the sparks between them. "A student of people, of behavior, of music, science, the arts," Boldt is an unusually appealing cop who treats himself with elegant high teas and worries about victims as if they were family. A riveting secondary plot involving a motherly psychic and her young accomplice parallels the main one until the two plots converge. Shop talk is authentic, but at times we feel we're hanging around the station too long. Moving from one punchy scene to the next, this fuse-burning suspense tale is wonderful reading for a wide audience. Recommended for all fiction collections; librarians should note that three earlier books in the Boldt-Matthews series are in development with HBO.--Molly Gorman, San Marino, Cal.

Starred review from December 15, 1996
The best suspense writers never stop playing the reader's emotions, alternating the rhythm of hot and cold, taut and slack, to create a syncopated form of torture as painful as it is exquisite. And there is no more exquisite torturer in the genre than Ridley Pearson, whose latest Lou Boldt^-Daphne Matthews thriller further demonstrates his complete command of the form. This time, it's an arsonist that has Detective Boldt and police psychologist Matthews grasping wildly for clues, either of the forensic or psychological variety. The problem is the fires themselves: they're so hot, they leave nothing behind, not even bodies. Alternating with the fascinating procedural details of how evidence is gathered from ash and melted concrete is the parallel story of Matthews' involvement with a 10-year-old boy who may have seen the arsonist. As Pearson follows the boy around Seattle, and we come to realize the danger he's in, we crave the safety of the procedural story, to which Pearson returns us every 20 pages or so--but never quite soon enough and always with the knowledge that the respite won't last. Throw in the building tragedy in Boldt's marriage and the smoldering attraction he still feels for Matthews, and Pearson has all the sharps and flats he needs to keep his roller-coaster rhythm rising and falling, speeding and slowing, yet somehow always building, winding us tighter. You have to be a bit of a masochist to give in to a Pearson plot, but when you do, it hurts so good. ((Reviewed December 15, 1996))(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 1996, American Library Association.)