A Killer Harvest

Starred review from May 29, 2017
Edgar-finalist Cleave (Trust No One) makes an implausible, but very creepy, premise work in this powerful, thought-provoking novel set in Christchurch, New Zealand, which could pass for any of the corrupt cities more familiar to fans of American noir. Det. Insp. Ben Kirk and Det. Insp. Mitchell Logan are on the trail of the sadist who butchered a young woman with a power saw left near her abandoned car on a motorway. They trace the blood-stained tool to a construction site, where foreman Simon Bower identifies it as belonging to one of his workers, Boris McKenzie. Kirk and Logan’s efforts to apprehend McKenzie end badly, claiming the lives of two men, one of whom is an organ donor whose death provides the chance for a new life for a blind 16-year-old boy. When the eye operation doesn’t go as planned, the plot spins off in a new direction and more violence follows. Few characters are wholly innocent, and the road to hell acquires a few more paving stones by the end of this impressive crime thriller. Agent: Jane Gregory, Gregory and Company.

June 1, 2017
Nightmare specialist Cleave (Trust No One, 2015, etc.) puts a new spin on the old horror chestnut that transplants a dead killer's organs into an innocent victim. Make that several new spins.Life hasn't been kind to Joshua Logan. Blind from birth, he's never seen so much as a shape or color. He's never met his father, who died before he was born, or his mother, who died soon thereafter. And now his foster father, DI Mitchell Logan, has died as well, dropped from a high floor on a construction site by Simon Bower, the sex killer he was after, moments before Bower was shot himself by Logan's partner, DI Ben Kirk. The only silver lining in all this pain is that Logan arranged for pioneering ophthalmologist Toni Coleman to transplant his eyes to Joshua, who can suddenly see the world in all its glory. At least out of his left eye, anyway; his right eye presents a consistently darker and more unfocused view. Neither Joshua nor anyone else knows that's because a careless orderly confused the dead police officer's donor eyes with those of his killer, and now Joshua has ended up with one eye from each donor. For quite a while, the cellular memory he's inherited from both his foster father and a seriously disturbed murderer seems the least of his problems, for he's bullied at his new school and stalked by fired deliveryman Vincent Archer, Bower's partner in crime, who's determined to avenge his best friend by making Ben Kirk's life hell, killing everyone close to him--a list on which Joshua figures prominently. But a further series of plot twists shows that the greatest danger comes from somewhere else and brings Joshua's nerve-wracking double dose of cellular memory back to center stage. Starting with a macabre setup, Cleave keeps upping the stakes till any scrap of plausibility is left far behind and only an increasingly effective series of hair-raising thrills remains.

COPYRIGHT(2017) Kirkus Reviews, ALL RIGHTS RESERVED.

July 1, 2017
Two homicide detectives, in collusion with a doctor, transcend legal and moral boundaries for what they consider a righteous cause: killing bad people to provide organs for good people. But they don't factor in cellular memory, the notion that memory can reside in organs other than the brain, accounting for odd behavioral changes in transplant recipients. When Christchurch, New Zealand, cops Mitchell Logan and Ben Kirk apprehend murderer Simon Bower on a construction site, Bower shoots Logan with a nail gun and pushes him to his death; in response, Kirk kills Bower. Logan has stipulated that his eyes go to his blind 16-year-old son, Joshua. But when both Logan's and Bower's organs are harvested, a doped-up resident drops the eyes he's delivering to the two operating rooms. Joshua joins the world of the sighted, but he's plagued with disturbing dreams, launching a deadly quest for revenge before uncovering what the father he loved and admired has done. Cleave, a master of dark and compelling thrillers, puts a moral spin on this twisting, chilling tale with its disturbing finale.(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2017, American Library Association.)