Five Minutes Alone

Starred review from August 11, 2014
What if the desire of relatives of murder victims to have five minutes alone with the killer were taken seriously? That fascinating idea is at the heart of New Zealand author Cleave’s fiendishly twisted thriller, the fourth starring Det. Insp. Theodore Tate (after 2012’s The Laughterhouse). Tate has been put through the wringer: his daughter was killed by a drunk driver in an accident that left his wife with memory issues; he himself only recently emerged from a coma. When Dwight Smith, a convicted rapist fresh out of prison, is found in pieces near a railroad track in a Christchurch suburb, it appears he has committed suicide. Surveillance footage, however, reveals that Smith had been stalking Kelly Summers, the woman he raped, and when Tate visits her home, he finds evidence implicating her in her assailant’s death. The truth is beyond complex, and Cleave’s masterful plotting skills are matched with superior pacing and characterization. Agent: Jane Gregory, Gregory and Company.

Starred review from October 1, 2014
Think vigilante killers have it easy? Cleave offers a macabre, compelling demonstration of how Murphy's Law dogs the efforts of ex-cop Carl Schroder to give victims of violent crime the five minutes alone they crave with the criminals who've ruined their lives. Even more than Carl's earlier cases (Joe Victim, 2013, etc.), this one is a catalog of the profoundly damaged souls who throng Christchurch, New Zealand. Kelly Summers has never been the same since she was stabbed and raped five years ago. Carl's old partner, DI Theodore Tate, spent months in a coma before emerging to a shaky second chance. Tate's wife, Bridget, still has days when she thinks her daughter Emily, killed by a drunk driver her husband secretly executed, is still alive and panics because she can't find her. Most damaged of all is Carl, who, having lost the ability to feel most emotions, keeps woodenly telling himself, "Why was anything." When Kelly's rapist, Dwight Smith, gets released from prison and promptly goes after Kelly to finish the job he started five years ago, Carl is on hand to stop him. That's where the good news ends, for once Carl offers Kelly her five minutes alone with Cowboy Dwight, the rest of this long, winding tale becomes an encyclopedia of all the things that can go wrong once you've embarked on a career of meting out summary justice. You can forget to conceal vital evidence against yourself. Your friends can suspect what you're doing and be deeply ambivalent about how to react. You can pick the wrong people to execute, either because they're not really guilty or because they're capable of fighting back. The car you're using to transport a victim's body can run out of gas. It's Murphy's Law written in blood. "All of this killing has made him feel," Carl's exhilarated to realize. Readers following him through this season of Breaking Bad reworked by the Coen Brothers will feel the whole gamut right along with him.

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Starred review from September 15, 2014
This powerhouse of a tale offers a fresh reworking of themes that forever obsess crime novelists. The victim's loved ones' longing to savage the creep who hurt their beloved. The rogue cop, all too happy to oblige. The citizenryand the police forcecheering the vigilante on and making a hero of him. This avenger goes a step further, granting the survivors' wish When you catch the one who did this, give me five minutes alone with him even to the point of knocking the criminal cold and handing him over. Detective Theodore Tate is hardly pure of heart: he murdered the drunk who killed his daughter, and, to complicate things, the vigilante he seeks is aware of it. The murders proceed, in dazzling scenes both artful and graphic, until the hurt ones understand that revenge doesn't bring the expected relief. Chapters of sleuthing alternate with those of punishment and monologues in which characters are known by their rhetorical positions, for or against this revenge. Then comes the ambiguous ending. Does the law win? Well, let's say a balance is achieved. A gripping thriller from beginning to end.(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2014, American Library Association.)