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Summary
Summary
You have never met an (ex) FBI agent like Brigid Quinn
"Keeping secrets, telling lies, they require the same skill. Both become a habit, almost an addiction, that's hard to break even with the people closest to you, out of the business. For example, they say never trust a woman who tells you her age; if she can't keep that secret, she can't keep yours. I'm fifty-nine."
Brigid Quinn's experiences in hunting sexual predators for the FBI have left her with memories she wishes she didn't have and lethal skills she hopes never to need again. Having been pushed into early retirement by events she thinks she's put firmly behind her, Brigid keeps telling herself she is settling down nicely in Tucson with a wonderful new husband, Carlo, and their dogs.
But the past intervenes when a man named Floyd Lynch confesses to the worst unsolved case of Brigid's career--the disappearance and presumed murder of her young protégée, Jessica. Floyd knows things about that terrible night that were never made public, and offers to lead the cops to Jessica's body in return for a plea bargain.
It should finally be the end of a dark chapter in Brigid's life. Except...the new FBI agent on the case, Laura Coleman, thinks the confession is fake, and Brigid finds she cannot walk away from violence and retribution after all, no matter what the cost.
With a fiercely original and compelling voice, Becky Masterman's Rage Against the Dying marks the heart-stopping debut of a brilliant new thriller writer.
Author Notes
BECKY MASTERMAN, who was an acquisitions editor for a press specializing in medical textbooks for forensic examiners and law enforcement, received her M.A. in creative writing from Florida Atlantic University. Her debut thriller, Rage Against the Dying , was a finalist for the Edgar Award for Best First Novel, the CWA Gold Dagger Award for Best Crime Novel of 2013, as well as the Macavity, Barry, and Anthony awards. Becky lives in Tucson, Arizona, with her husband.
Reviews (5)
Publisher's Weekly Review
Resist any temptation to bail after the creepy prologue-a sexual predator's-eye-view of the woman he's about to attack-because then you'll miss one of the most memorable FBI agents since Clarice Starling as well as a killer debut thriller. At 59, Brigid Quinn has officially closed the book on a legendary-and controversial-Bureau career, including years undercover, and is struggling to forget the horrors that still haunt her as a newlywed in a suburb north of Tucson, Ariz. Then the authorities arrest trucker Floyd Lynch, who claims to be the Route 66 Killer-the one notorious homicide case she didn't close, and which seven years earlier claimed the life of her protegee, rookie undercover agent Jessica Robertson. But some things just don't add up to either young FBI agent Laura Coleman or Quinn. The steely veteran finds herself thrust back into a nightmare that threatens to shatter her new life-if it doesn't get her killed. First-time novelist Masterman, acquisitions editor for a press specializing in forensic medical textbooks, ratchets up the suspense with a secondary plot it would be criminal to reveal, stumbling only when it comes to Quinn's less than convincing domestic bliss with a widowed former priest turned college professor and his pair of pugs. Agent: Helen Heller, the Helen Heller Agency. (Mar.) (c) Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved.
Kirkus Review
Masterman's gangbusters debut sets a retired FBI agent who thinks she's seen it all against a serial killer who provides new horrors she's never seen. Before shooting an unarmed suspect back in Georgia sent her into early retirement in Tucson, Brigid Quinn had earned a reputation as a brave sex-crimes undercover agent and a skilled investigator. Now that she's living the good life with her bridegroom, Carlos DiForenza, a priest turned professor, she thinks that's all behind her, from the adrenaline rushes to the scandal. But she couldn't be more wrong. When long-haul trucker Floyd Lynch confesses to being the Route 66 killer who killed eight women over a dozen years--the eighth of them being Jessica Robertson, who'd been working as bait under Brigid's supervision--Laura Coleman, a Tucson FBI agent who's always admired Brigid, shares her suspicion that Lynch's confession is bogus and asks Brigid to work the case with her. There are only three complications: Brigid isn't entitled to work any cases anymore; Coleman disappears shortly after getting eased off the case herself; and Brigid shortly has her hands full covering up her own killing of murderous rapist Gerald Peasil. Readers who can accept the coincidence of two sex killers sharing the same zip code and Brigid's unconvincing explanation of why she doesn't just report Peasil's death, which would manifestly be covered by a self-defense plea, are in for a ride as thrilling as they can find outside the pages of Jeffery Deaver (who's regularly invoked here), in the company of a heroine whose cleareyed disillusionment gives each wisecrack a trembling sense of mortality. A scorching, humane first novel that reads as if Masterman's been sitting for a long time on some truly ugly secrets.]] Copyright Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.
Booklist Review
Brigid Quinn is a retired FBI agent who was forced out over shooting an unarmed man. She spent her career undercover, working on sexual predator cases, and trained her protege, Jessica, to follow in her footsteps. Jessica went missing while working on a serial-killer case, and Brigid never recovered from the loss. Several years later, she is happily married and living an idyllic life in Tucson when she learns that there has been an arrest in the case, but the new agent working it, Laura Coleman, thinks the confession is false. When Coleman disappears and the bureau doesn't seem to notice, Brigid finds herself in the thick of things once again, only this time she is worried about losing another agent, her husband, and her newfound happiness. Brigid is a marvelous character, and her skills are fearsome for someone her age. Although Brigid sometimes takes things too far, stretching the bounds of credulity, it is worth the suspension of disbelief to hang with her. Fans of Lisa Gardner and Tess Gerritsen will love this book.--Alesi, Stacy Copyright 2010 Booklist
New York Review of Books Review
When it comes to great settings for a crime novel, there's no place like home. For Stephan Talty, that's Buffalo, which he has made both the locale and a major character in his first thriller, BLACK IRISH (Ballantine, $26). As viewed by Detective Absalom (Abbie) Kearney, lately returned to care for a father whose mind is going, Buffalo is a decaying place, sunk in despair, haunted by its illustrious past. "The whole city was entombed by the artifacts of its glory days," she observes of the disintegrating waterfront, the bankrupt mills and "silent" smokestacks, the highways built for a population long gone. And nowhere is this sense of loss more keenly felt than in the section where Abbie grew up, "a patch of Ireland in the wilds of America" known as the County. "Some parts of the neighborhood never changed. The clannish logic. The hostility to outsiders. The secret, ancient warmth. The alcoholism." But while attitudes may have remained inflexible, the County has hardly escaped the passage of time. Drugs are in the schools, families are on welfare and churches have been abandoned, including St. Teresa's, which Abbie attended as a child - the same church where the mutilated body of Jimmy Ryan has turned up in the basement. As the adopted daughter of a revered local cop, Abbie is familiar with the strict social protocols observed in the County. But as someone who moved away and only recently made her way back, armed with a fancy college degree and a refined accent, she'll always be an outsider. None of these clannish people, who bear "an ancestral memory of being oppressed in a country they'd never been to," trust her on this murder case, which escalates into unspeakable savagery as the bodies pile up. The technical police work is not very convincing, and by placing Abbie and her family at the heart of the mystery, Talty limits his detective's objectivity. But there's something hypnotic about the voices heard up and down the streets and in holy places like the Gaelic Club, "the mother ship of the County," which was once the setting for dances and weddings and rowdy political gatherings. Now it's the scene of its own wake, a sight that strikes Abbie as unbearably sad. But, as the bartender observes, "anything that's dying's beautiful for a while." "No one likes a woman who knows how to kill with her bare hands." Brigid Quinn, the unconventional heroine of Becky Masterman's first novel, RAGE AGAINST THE DYING (Minotaur, $24.99), learned that lesson in her former career as an undercover F.B.I. agent. Nowadays, if anyone should ask, Brigid will say she investigated copyright infringements, since she's a fanatic about guarding her secrets from the new husband she adores. Although Brigid is determined to enjoy her early retirement in laid-back Tucson ("which everyone told me was a lovely place but that felt a lot like Siberia, only hot"), it's just her bad luck to attract a killer rapist who claims "older broads" as his "specialty." Still in fighting shape at 59, Brigid is one old broad who is tough to kill. So tough she accidentally kills this creep. Unfortunately, in her panic to cover up the deed, she alerts another maniac cruising the old Route 66, which for serial killers is "kind of like the Appalachian Trail, only paved." Brigid wears her age well, and she makes it work for her too. She knows people would like to think that as they get older "all women must get suddenly serene, their anger draining away with their estrogen." Some do, some don't. So, take her or leave her, "this is Brigid Quinn, a woman of a certain age, raging." Legal mysteries would be much more enjoyable if they didn't have self-aggrandizing lawyers in them. Lachlan Smith makes tidy work of neutralizing that problem in his first novel, BEAR IS BROKEN (Mysterious Press/Grove/ Atlantic, $24), by introducing us to Teddy Maxwell, a San Francisco attorney with the reputation of being "about as crooked as a lawyer can be." Sadly, this wonderful rogue (possessed of "a brilliance realized most fully in its decadent form") is shot in the head while having lunch with his kid brother, Leo. While Teddy lies in a coma, Leo, who's just passed his bar exam, does a respectable job of representing his brother's thuggish clients. He's also well on the way to nailing Teddy's attacker when Smith gets all tangled up in an unnecessarily complicated ending. Overplotting is a beginner's mistake, but Smith doesn't write like a novice. He'll surely get the hang of it next time. The free-for-all in DONNYBROOK (Ferrar, Straus & Giroux, paper, $15) is a "three-day bareknuckles tournament" that a rich and sadistic patron of the arts holds on his 1,000-acre spread in rural Indiana. In Frank Bill's brutally funny first novel, fighters come from miles around to bash one another's brains out, until the last man standing is awarded a cool hundred grand. Among the brawlers and sports fans making the trek to this backwoods battlefield are Jarhead Earl, a lovable lug from the hills of southeastern Kentucky; Ali Squires ("Bare. Knuckle. God"); and Chainsaw Angus, a mad-dog meth dealer who, with his sister, Liz ("pure poison"), makes up a tag team of killers. Fun is fun, but Bill is also keeping track of the human fallout: the "children hanging from mothers anchored by out-of-work fathers" who live in "rotted houses and beat-down trailers" on country roads, waiting for the meth dealer to show up. A scene that could definitely make you want to fight. Stephan Talty makes the city of Buffalo both the locale and a major character in his first thriller.
Library Journal Review
Yes, this debut thriller has a fast-paced, action-filled plot littered with serial killers and their victims. Yes, its portrayal of FBI procedures resonates with authenticity, and the romantic subplot is engaging. But, most of all, it is the savvy heroine/narrator, Brigid Quinn, who will capture the reader's attention. Brigid is a 59-year-old retired FBI agent with a bad back, a history of alcohol abuse, and a questionable officer-involved shooting in her past. Yet she's made a new life for herself in the outskirts of Tucson by marrying widowed philosophy professor and former priest Carlo DiForenza. She's taken up cooking and gardening and has come to love twilight strolls with her new husband and their two rambunctious pugs. However, when the loose ends of an old unsolved case begin to intrude on her idyllic life, Brigid quickly finds herself caught up in the intrigue despite her desperate desire to shield Carlo from the reality of her past. Verdict Masterman lives up to her name in this masterly combination of compelling character and plot to keep the pages turning. And readers of a certain age will love her middle-aged protagonist. [Library marketing; Minotaur 1st Edition Selection.]-Nancy McNicol, Hamden P.L., CT (c) Copyright 2013. Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.