Peril

December 22, 2003
A kaleidoscopic array of viewpoints tumble and shift in this latest suspense thriller by Edgar Award–winner Cook (The Interrogation
, etc.), until the facts settle into place and the full picture can be understood. The complex arrangement of voices and events works smoothly, bringing each of the protagonists more clearly into focus as the story progresses. As the novel begins, Sara Labriola is fleeing Tony, her husband of nine years. It's not that she doesn't love him, but Tony's overbearing mobster father, Leo, casts a long shadow over Sara and Tony's marriage. Around the same time, sad sack Mortimer, a broke gambler who owes Leo $15,000, learns he has three months to live. Desperate to discharge his debts and leave a little something for his wife before he dies, he agrees to help Vinnie Caruso, who's following orders from Leo to find Sara. Mortimer turns to the shadowy Stark, an obsessive, tightly wound man who excels at finding people. Stark is haunted by the fate of a woman he found years earlier, and he suspects that this case, too, is not about a loving husband looking for his spouse. Sara, meanwhile, has stumbled into a New York nightclub frequented by Mortimer, where she gets a job as a singer. Cleverly manipulated coincidence provides much of the driving force here, to excellent effect. Although most of the characters are cookie-cutter noir, neat turns of phrase and tight plotting make for an engaging read.

November 15, 2003
Edgar Award-winning Cook can be seen as a kind of master puppeteer, tightening complicated lines of suspense around the target puppet, usually an isolated woman with secrets any number of other people want her to die with--and fast. The more the target puppet moves (and Cook's heroines tend to move as far away from their pasts as possible), the more the lines surround and cripple her. Cook's latest follows this formula fairly closely. Sara Labriola lives in a lovely home in a beautiful neighborhood on Long Island, but her past casts long shadows, and her dreams have been splintered by a control-freak husband and his even more pathologically controlling father, a particularly ugly-acting Mob boss. Sara bolts, determined to leave no trace, hoping that New York City can make her invisible. Cook's narrative is couched throughout in extremely short chapters (a three-pager is unusual here). While this spy novel-style shuttling among different characters and locales lends edginess appropriate to a chase story, it can get dizzying and takes away from any real character development. Readers may get lost among the plot strands and, in a novel loaded with bad guys, forget the motivation of each. The dialogue is somewhat barren as well, being limited to the woman in peril's terse communications and the Anglo-Saxonisms of the mobsters. A terrific climax makes most of the above forgivable, however, especially for those who look to thrillers mainly for pulse pounding.(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2003, American Library Association.)