Pursuit

PURSUIT begins with an arresting concept: a ruthless lone wolf is brought in to track and capture an even more ruthless killer. But after a great start, the book peters out as a result of a series of unlikely events. Narrator Tom Weiner is certainly not to blame. He does an impressive job breathing life into the stale plot. But no matter how good the reader, the story is so outrageously flawed that it can't be saved. The end is so quick and anticlimactic it's as if the author got bored with the book and just stopped writing. Pick up DARKLY DREAMING DEXTER by Jeff Lindsay to see how well a similar plot can be handled. M.S. (c) AudioFile 2007, Portland, Maine

December 3, 2001
The massacre of 13 people in a Louisville restaurant opens Perry's latest psychological thriller (after Death Benefits). Criminologist Daniel Millikan determines that this was no random occurrence, but an assassination carried out by a ruthless, methodical predator—but who was the target? The killer, James Varney, is a cold-blooded psychopath who claimed his first victim—his aunt—at the age of 11; a loner, he later turned to robbery and murder for hire. Against his better judgment, Millikan supplies the father of one of the victims with the name of someone who might be able to help: shady operator Roy Prescott. Prescott's past is dark enough to enable him to get inside the mind of the killer and, with Millikan's help, he sets in motion an elaborate cat-and-mouse game that moves from city to city, with each man trying to anticipate the other's every move as the body count continues to rise. The traps Prescott devises to catch his prey—and the ways in which Varney eludes them—are fascinating, albeit a bit far-fetched, and Perry supplies just enough background to give the two leads depth with a minimum of psychobabble. The female characters, while essential to the plot, are thinly drawn by comparison, and the book loses momentum about halfway through, when Varney goes into hiding and Prescott tries to determine who hired him to commit the initial murders—but Perry definitely comes through in the end, expertly tying the threads together. Agent, Lescher and Lescher. 6-city author tour.