Strip Search

June 18, 2007
Bernhardt’s dysfunctional Las Vegas cop, Susan Pulaski, tracks another maniacal serial killer in this circuitous and graphically violent sequel to 2005’s Dark Eye
. When the grisly murders—in which the victim is branded and dismembered, and a mathematical equation left at each crime scene—hit Vegas, police chief Robert O’Bannon temporarily rehires widowed ex-police profiler Susan, against the wishes of Lt. Barry Granger, the homicide detective leading the investigation, who despises Susan. The chief’s autistic math-whiz son, Darcy, may be able to crack the killer’s baffling symbols, but O’Bannon warns Susan to keep Darcy on the sidelines. As tensions escalate between Susan and Granger, Susan remains one step behind the mastermind behind the crimes. Distracting lectures on numerology, the Kabbalah and advanced mathematics interrupt the overloaded plot, but the ghastly puzzle comes together in a breathtaking, suspenseful finale.

August 1, 2007
In Dark Eye (2005), Bernhardt (of the Ben Kincaid series) struck out in a new direction, introducing readers to Susan Pulaski, a down-and-out former Las Vegas police detective who teamed up with an autistic savant, Darcy OBannon, to track down a serial killer. Now theyre hot on the trail of another killer, a ruthless executioner who kills according to a complex mathematical process. This is a better book than its predecessor, perhaps because Bernhardt has a firmer grasp of his characters. Pulaski seems less pathetic, and OBannon seems less like a curiosity. The story, too, is compelling, grittily gruesome in a Jeffrey Deaver kind of way.(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2007, American Library Association.)