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Summary
Summary
It seems like an ordinary skull -- but it isn't. And for forensic sculptor Eve Duncan, this discovery will draw her into a frightening odyssey of greed, manipulation, and violence.It started simply enough, with businessman John Logan offering her another routine job of recreating a face from a skull. Hesitant at first, then persuaded to accept, Eve leaves the safety of her home office for Logan's makeshift lab, never expecting that the face she will construct using a computer, plasticine, and clay will make her the target of an audacious killer. For that face belongs to a man who's supposed to be alive, a man of vital importance to the nation.As Eve struggles to puzzle out the truth, she and Logan will become entangled in a dangerous web of lies and deceit, with threads that may extend all the way to the highest office in the land.
Author Notes
Iris Johansen was born on April 7, 1938. She started writing when her two children were in college. A year later she finished her first novel, a contemporary romance. After writing many best-selling historical romances and fantasies, including the Sedikhan and Clanad series, she turned to suspense fiction. Her works include And Then You Die, The Ugly Duckling, Pandora's Daughter, Killer Dreams, Dead Aim, No One to Trust, The Perfect Witness, Night Watch, the Eve Duncan series, the Catherine Ling series, and the Kendra Michaels series.
(Bowker Author Biography)
Reviews (4)
Publisher's Weekly Review
While not as unrelentingly grim as its predecessor, And Then You Die, this suspense thrillerfrom an author who has successfully written historical romance with a dark edgehas its share of grisly scenes, beginning in medias res at the execution of Ralph Fraser, the serial killer who has murdered protagonist Eve Ducan's only child, Bonnie. To overcome her grief, Eve takes up a (notably icky) career as a forensic sculptor, making busts from the skulls of unidentified murdered children so that their parents can identify them. New trouble comes when computer mogul John Logan recruits Eve to reconstruct and identify an adult male skull. The job comes with unforeseen risks and political implications; various criminal figures want to keep the skull's identity a secret and are ruthlessly determined to go to any lengths to avoid exposure. Eve, who combines a tough survivor's instinct with emotional vulnerability, is led to fear for her own life and for the lives of her mother and dearest friends. Despite slow early chapters and stilted dialogue, Johansen makes an admirable effort to give psychological depth even to her villains, and her action scenes use terse prose to build tension. With the help of well-timed, steady disclosures and surprising revelations, the book's twists and turns manage to hold the reader hostage until the denouement, a sure crowd pleaser (since it promises a sequel). Major ad/promo. (Oct.) FYI: A 16-page excerpt of The Face of Deception will be included in the paperback reprint of And Then You Die, out in September. (c) Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved
Kirkus Review
Johansen (And Then You Die, 1998, etc.) leaves romance behind for some pedestrian adventure and a stab at emotional healing. Ever since best-selling Patricia Cornwell introduced medical examiner Kay Scarpetta, romantic-suspense authors have driven their plots by means of coroners and forensic anthropologists. And now heres what may possibly be the first forensic sculptornamely, Eve Duncan, who takes skulls and, with the use of computers, scientific measurements, fake eyeballs, and her own sculpting talent, re-creates the fleshed-out heads of possible murder victims. Why? Because shes searching for the body of her daughter Bonnie, who was killed by a psychopath but never found. Calling them her ``lost ones,'' Eve obsessively rebuilds the heads of slain childrenuntil now unidentifiedso that she can send them home to their families for burial. Meanwhile, Eve, being one of the best forensic sculptors around, is solicited for a top-secret mission by computer billionaire John, who fails to tell her of the many dangers hes involving her in. With a cock-and-bull story about finding the real head of John F. Kennedy, he hires her to sculpt a face around a mysterious skull that turns out to belong to the corpse of the now-President of the US (Ben Chadbourne). A double, it turns out, is occupying the White House and being manipulated by the brilliant First Lady and an official in the Treasury Department. Johansen gives hints of a budding affair between Eve and Logan and between Eve and her best pal, Atlanta police detective Joe Quinn. The trouble is that with three strong, silent types like Duncan, Logan, and Quinn, there isn't a whole lot for the reader to sink her romantic teeth into, and, with the exception of a great red herring at the start, there isn't a whole lot of suspense, either. A sequel is on its way, and perhaps with that Johansen will deliver what she only promises here.
Booklist Review
Johansen really hits her stride as a suspense novelist in this engrossing tale of forensic sculptor Eve Duncan, who is swept into a maelstrom of murder, deception, and political intrigue when she is coerced into rebuilding the face of an adult whose remains consist of a burned skull. Obsessed with establishing the identities of the skeletal remains of murdered children ever since her daughter was killed and the body was never found, Eve resists the request of billionaire John Logan to work on this mysterious case until her lab is destroyed and her mother threatened. Once on the job, she finds herself caught up in a dangerous world of high-level politics and hired enforcers. Johansen, who cut her teeth writing romance novels, skillfully wraps this riveting combination of action, suspense, and forensic science in layers of sexual tension with just the subtlest hint that romance may erupt. The insane conspiracy and repressed attraction between the two main characters feel deliciously akin to the X-Files but without the supernatural elements, and the detailed focus on forensic sculpting makes this appealing to fans of Patricia Cornwell and Kathy Reichs. --Diana Tixier Herald
Library Journal Review
Eve Duncan, the best forensic sculptor in the nation, is obsessed with identifying the remains of murdered children and returning them to their parents. Haunted by the murder of her own daughter, whose body was never recovered, she leads a reclusive life that revolves around her work. When billionaire computer guru John Logan lures her to work on an adult skull via a large contribution to a fund for lost children, Duncan doesn't realize the magnitude of what she's getting into. Johansen's complex plot, with numerous twists and turns, keeps the listener guessing right up until the (somewhat dragged out) ending. Jill Hennessy is a capable reader, although in longer passages of dialog it does frequently become difficult to distinguish who is speaking. A few abrupt changes also mar the production, taking listeners out of the story until they realize that the scene has, indeed, changed. Still, this is a nonstop plot that will keep the cassettes flipping. For popular collections.ÄAdrienne Furness, Lockport P.L., NY (c) Copyright 2010. Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.