Dark Tribute

January 15, 2019
Think the competition among music students at Juilliard is fierce? Wait till you hear what the family of violinist Anna Svardak has done, and is prepared to do, to anyone they consider a rival.By the time John Svardak sets his sights on Cara Delaney, he's already murdered four other violinists on both sides of the Atlantic because their music-making can't compare to that of his long-dead violinist sister, Anna. In fact, the chain of vengeance goes back even further, since Cara's grandfather Sergai Kaskov murdered Anna as payback for the time years earlier when Anna's father and brother broke Kaskov's finger bones in the gulag where they were imprisoned together because they feared him as yet another possible competitor in the days when she was still alive. Svardak succeeds in snatching Cara from her concert tour and hiding her out in the wilds of West Virginia as he cackles over the fate she'll share with her most recent predecessor, violinist Marian Napier. Fortunately, Cara's guardians, forensic sculptor Eve Duncan and Detective Joe Quinn of the Atlanta Police Department, and Michael, Eve's preternaturally empathic 10-year-old son, are fully equal to the challenge of locating her before she can follow Niccolò Paganini and Jascha Heifetz into history. So for that matter is Cara herself, who's so eager to consummate her recently professed love for Eve's childhood friend Jock Gavin that she's doubly watchful and resourceful in planning her escape. But restoring Cara to the bosom of her family is only one more chapter in the war declared by Svardak, who's "crazy, not a ruthless sociopath," as Joe helpfully observes, and who's bent on eliminating everyone Cara loves before he returns to sweep her up again, this time for keeps, as a final tribute to his dead sister.The densely woven backstory, the oracular speeches, the elliptically motivated vendetta, and the constant recourse to near-supernatural powers all suggest that what Johansen (Vendetta, 2018, etc.) is writing is not a fairy tale for adults but a fairy tale with a mostly adult cast.

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December 1, 2018
If revenge is a dish best served cold, then John Svardak's vendetta against his longtime nemesis, Sergei Kaskov, has reached polar proportions. While a young man imprisoned in a Russian gulag, Svardak took his first act of vengeance against Kaskov in a disfiguring injury that ruined Kaskov's musical aspirations. In retaliation, Kaskov murdered Svardak's father and brother. Now, decades later, Svardak hopes to settle the score by kidnapping and brutally killing Kaskov's granddaughter, violin virtuoso Cara Delaney, and endangering the lives of those closest to her: Joe Quinn, ex-Navy SEAL husband of forensic-sculptor Eve Duncan; their psychically empathic son, Michael; and the charismatic but deadly Jock Gavin, the love of Cara's life. In her captivity, Cara finds a fierce inner strength that propels her to take control of her fate, to the dismay of Gavin and Duncan. Focusing on the manipulative nature of friends and enemies, lovers and family, Johansen's psychologically intense thriller featuring the newly empowered Delaney, who trades her passiveness for determination, will resonate with prescient timeliness. HIGH-DEMAND BACKSTORY: Johansen's Eve Duncan series is a perennial favorite of crime-fiction fans.(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2018, American Library Association.)

October 15, 2018

Violin prodigy Cara Delaney is lucky to have forensic sculptor Eve Duncan and former U.S. Navy SEAL Joe Quinn for guardians, and her life is flowing smoothly. Then she's kidnapped by an evil man from her grandfather's past. A national one-day laydown on March 26.

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