Abandoned

September 14, 2009
In McFadyen's intense fourth book to feature scarred FBI agent Smoky Barrett (after The Darker Side
), a psychopath known as “Dali” abducts wives for men who wish to be rid of them, imprisons them for years in darkness and isolation (“I'm just storing meat”) until life insurance proceeds are paid to the husbands—then charges half the insurance for “services” rendered. Nonpaying husbands suffer excruciatingly painful blackmail. While Smoky, who heads the L.A. branch of the FBI's National Center for the Analysis of Violent Crime, is attending a friend's seaside wedding, a bald delirious woman is thrown out of a car, which speeds off. This incident leads to Smoky's own abduction, in which her sadistic captor forces her to choose her freedom on condition of what amounts to death for her young FBI colleague. McFadyen knows how to put readers into the minds of his characters, but many will need megawatt night-lights after finishing this violent psychological thriller.

October 1, 2009
Smoky Barrett (The Darker Side, 2008, etc.) returns to hunt another serial killer, this one with an extra-nasty twist.

The killer haunts virulently misogynistic websites, locates disaffected husbands who want to off their spouses, helps them out, then splits the insurance money seven years after the wives'"disappearance." Smoky, who heads the L.A. branch of the National Center for the Analysis of Violent Crime (NCAVC), is put in charge of the investigation. She bears physical metaphorical scars from her encounter with a serial killer: Joseph Sands, who murdered Smoky's husband while she watched, then raped her and caused the death of her daughter. She later joined the NCAVC, where her colleagues are marked by a combination of admirable solidity and quirky brilliance. The plot gets rolling while Smoky is at a friend's wedding, suddenly interrupted by the appearance of a car, from which is dumped the abused but still breathing body of Heather Hollister, an LAPD homicide detective who disappeared eight years before. The main suspect at that time was none other than her smarmy husband Douglas, who turns out to have been haunting some extremely sketchy websites that evinced a repellent hostility to women. Meanwhile, Heather was declared dead, and Douglas remarried and cashed in on his former wife's insurance. Smoky and her colleagues create a fake persona on some scurrilous websites to try to lure out an abductor and serial killer known only (and surreally) as Dali. The plan begins to go awry when Dali kidnaps Smoky, keeps her naked and confined in a storage building and subjects her to methodical punishments designed to break her spirit. It turns out one of Dali's lessons in life is,"There is no soul; we're all just meat."

Not for the squeamish.

(COPYRIGHT (2009) KIRKUS REVIEWS/NIELSEN BUSINESS MEDIA, INC. ALL RIGHTS RESERVED.)

October 1, 2009
Revenge really is a dish best served cold. McFadyen's fourth Smoky Barrett novel (after "The Darker Side") opens with a gaunt, screaming woman, clothed only in a nightgown, thrown from a vehicle, while Barrett attends a colleague's wedding. The woman is a former LAPD homicide detective who went missing several years ago and was presumed dead. As Barrett and her elite FBI team begin to unravel the mystery surrounding this woman's disappearance and eight-year captivity, they find that she is "lucky" when they discover that she's not the only victim of this particular sociopath. This time the most sinister force behind these kidnappings may be more than even Barrett can handle. McFadyen expertly builds the cat-and-mouse suspense to a crescendo and then twists the reader's expectations at the end. VERDICT Recommended for fans of Chelsea Cain's "Heartsick" and thriller junkies who love an edgy mystery with an unflinchingly twisted sociopath at its core. [See Prepub Alert, "LJ" 7/09.]Susan O. Moritz, Montgomery Cty. P.L., MD

Copyright 2009 Library Journal, LLC Used with permission.

October 1, 2009
McFadyen has given diminutive serial-killer hunter Smoky Barrett an especially full plate this time. She and her lover, Tommy, have married, and fortysomething Cody is pregnant. The director of the FBI, fearing that apprehending serial killers will be left to local cops due to the bureaus shift to antiterrorism work, has asked Smoky to lead a single national team that will track down serial killers wherever they strike. Smoky is already focused on a new kind of serial killer, who seems to do it not because of obsession but because hes discovered a way to make it highly profitable. As in previous Smoky novels, McFadyen spins a terrific yarn that oozes creepiness and horror and puts Smoky, her family, and her unborn child at mortal risk. He also offers plausible-sounding procedural details, nuanced insights into profiling serial killers, and countless closely observed details of Smokys family life. This one nearly equals the best of the series, McFadyens previous high-voltage page-turner, The Darker Side (2008).(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2009, American Library Association.)