Midnight Rambler

If you listen to this book at night, you'll have every light in the house burning. Detective Jack Carpenter lost his wife and his job with the Miami Police as a result of losing his temper while capturing the sadistic serial killer Simon Skell, dubbed "the Midnight Rambler." A fan of the Rolling Stones, Skell would play "Midnight Rambler" as he tortured and killed his victims. Carpenter's world-weary tone is expertly rendered by Peter Jay Fernandez. The steamy South Florida setting is perfect for the mélange of well-crafted characters, colorful accents, and pulse-quickening plot twists. Don't say you weren't warned. R.O. (c) AudioFile 2008, Portland, Maine

August 6, 2007
Swain, author of the gambling crime series starring Tony Valentine (Grift Sense
, etc.), avoids many of the clichés of the antisocial ex-cop novel in this chilling stand-alone. A specialist in finding missing children, former cop Jack Carpenter was fired from the force for assaulting a prisoner. Broke after a civil lawsuit and estranged from his wife and daughter, he's living in a seedy beachside apartment north of Miami, Fla., with his dog. Then Simon Skell (aka the “Midnight Rambler”), whom Carpenter helped convict for murdering prostitutes, is released from prison on a technicality. Determined to prove Skell guilty, Carpenter is frozen out by the cop on the case, but help comes from an FBI agent whose daughter vanished years earlier. The tension rises as the investigation widens far beyond Skell. Well-defined characters and intricately woven subplots, one involving a nail-biting scene at Disney World, make this a page-turner. 12-city author tour.