Carol O’Connell writes psychological thrillers, based on a young NYC detective, Kathy Mallory. If you like the genre, this series is among the best. You can’t help liking the seemingly amoral, troubled cop as she solves crimes while challenging and confusing friends and enemies alike.
In the latest edition, O’Connell gives us more her heroine’s back story, and we see a bit into her troubled psyche.
Mallory, her partner Riker and genus psychologist, Charles Butler, end up on a cross country odyssey, tracing what’s left of the fabled Route 66 with a caravan of parents looking for missing children, many of whom have been murdered by a serial killer and buried along the fabled highway.
Finding and bringing that killer to justice is only part of the story. Mix in a bumbling FBI agent, a broken down boxer, and the ever lingering suspicion that Mallory may be tracking the father she had never met while running from a murder she committed in cold blood makes this the best Mallory story yet. And you can help just loving her new car, a Volkswagen set on a Porche Chassis that can turn 200 and leave cops in the dust.
If you haven’t read any of O’Connell’s novels, start with Winter House, her first, and work your way through. Its worth it. Her work borders on literature and for mystery writers, that’s high praise indeed…
JVH
