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Summary
Summary
Over the course of six novels, Carol O'Connell has become one of our most acclaimed writers of suspense. Her heroine, Kathy Mallory, is "stunningly unique" (Milwaukee Journal Sentinel). "O'Connell conjures up a world of almost Faulkerian richness and complexity," said People, and the Chicago Tribunewrote simply, "O'Connell has raised the standard for psychological thrillers." A wild child turned New York City policewoman, Mallory was adopted off the streets as a small girl. Very little has ever really been known about what happened to her back then, how she lived-but the past is about to come alive. Crime Schoolbegins with the discovery of a woman found hanging in a burning apartment, tufts of her own blond hair stuck in her mouth and red candles scattered all around. Immediately, Mallory knows several things. The fire was set so the woman would be discovered. The crime is identical to another one twenty years old. And she knows this woman. She is a prostitute named Sparrow, who took her in all those many years ago, and then betrayed her. There is unfinished business between Mallory and Sparrow, and the quest to settle it will send her spinning back to a time of secrets and desperation, and into the mind of a criminal whose work has only just begun.
Author Notes
Author Carol O'Connell was born in 1947. She attended the California Institute or Arts/Chouinard and Arizona State University, where she studied art. Before becoming a full-time writer, she worked as a freelance proofreader and copy editor as well as occasionally selling her paintings. At the age of 46, she wrote the first book in the Kathleen Mallory series and sold it to a British publisher. Her title The Chalk Girl made The New York Times Best Seller List for 2012.
(Bowker Author Biography)
Reviews (4)
Publisher's Weekly Review
In this seventh gripping entry in O'Connell's popular Mallory series, Special Crimes investigator Kathy Mallory again prowls the mean streets of New York, digging deeper into her past even as she and her cohorts ferret out a grisly serial killer. Each novel in the series reveals a little more about the utterly improbable and compellingly mythic life story of its protagonist, a tough cop and computer ace raised by hookers on the streets of New York. In this installment, Mallory's particular mentor, the prostitute Sparrow, is found partially scalped, hanging in a room decorated with jars of dead flies an M.O. that recalls a murderer from decades ago. The grim murder plot is offset by a cast of cartoony characters, ranging from series regular Charles Butler, Mallory's gentle giant best friend, to the rookie yellow-haired detective Ronald Deluthe, aka Duck Boy. O'Connell illuminates these oddballs with her lightly whimsical prose: "When Charles closed his tired eyes, he saw a tiny thief who ran with whores and lived by guile, surviving on animal instinct to get through the night an altogether admirable child." The side puzzle, a bibliomystery involving a series of pulp Westerns that obsessed Mallory as a girl, almost steals the show when it is solved. This novel is gritty, streetwise, funny and sure to bring in more fans for the still-enigmatic Mallory. (Sept. 16) Forecast: O'Connell's quirky series may not have hit bestseller lists yet, but solid sales attest to its loyal reader base. The long spell between the publication of the previous installment (Shell Game, 1999) and this one means diehard fans will be extra eager for their fix, and an author tour should recruit new readers. 60,000 first printing. (c) Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved
Kirkus Review
Sparrow, a middle-aged prostitute, is found hanging in the living room of her Greenwich Village apartment, the centerpiece of a ritualistic arrangement. Lit candles surround her; pieces of her hair are chopped off and stuffed in her mouth. The apartment has been set afire in select places, and dead insects surround the woman who, miraculously, survives in a coma. There's a double jolt for the NYPD's Kathleen Mallory (Shell Game, 1999, etc.): The crime scene reminds her of an unsolved murder of a generation ago, and Sparrow is a significant figure from Mallory's childhood. The closest thing to the adopted girl's big sister, Sparrow represented glamour, street smarts, and danger. Mallory's connection to the victim makes her colleagues privately question her judgment and doubt her conviction that they're looking for a serial killer. And sloppy police work in that earlier case, the murder of a young woman named Natalie Homer, obscures the connection to Sparrow's attempted murder. Though Mallory is the story's linchpin, O'Connell cuts among a handful of Special Crimes cops, sharply delineated, as they follow old leads and new evidence. Mallory's scruffy partner Riker arouses her suspicion by pocketing and concealing key evidence that leads him to unexpected corners of Sparrow's world. Mallory's mentor, methodical Charles Butler, uncovers eye-opening details about her past. And cocky younger detective Deluthe stumbles into dangerous situations and valuable witnesses as the anonymous killer closes in on struggling actress Stella Small. Like the best work of James Lee Burke and Barbara Vine, O'Connell's character-driven procedural transcends genre pigeonholing. The juxtaposition of grisly detail and elegantly elliptical writing creates suspense that builds and resonates. First printing of 60,000; author tour
Booklist Review
Kathy Mallory, NYPD detective, makes other contemporary women detectives look anemic. Mallory is effortlessly tough, genuinely gritty, unreflective in an unnerving way. She has a horrific past, as a throwaway child scrambling for a living among New York's whores and dopers, which seems only to have toughened her. Part of the complexity of this series is that O'Connell leaves in all the rough edges that a life on the streets would produce, refusing to gloss over, or glorify, the debilitating psychological effects of deprivation and trauma. Mallory can be dense; she can be a pain; she is fully human. In the seventh entry in this acclaimed series, Mallory, of the Special Crimes Unit, comes face to face with her past when she and her partner are called to a crime scene in which a call girl has been ritualistically murdered. The call girl, Sparrow, offered Mallory protection when she was a child but later betrayed her. Before Mallory has time to call up her knowledge of Sparrow's past in finding the killer, she and her partner are thrown into a morass of spree killings on the streets of New York. O'Connell's crime-scene investigation techniques ring true, her plotting is breathtaking, and her psychology acute. Searing suspense. --Connie Fletcher
Library Journal Review
Mallory's back! That's all O'Connell's many fans will need to hear before they grab this novel off the shelf. O'Connell's singular detective (Mallory's Oracle) has always treaded a fine line between heroine and psychopath. In this installment, more is revealed about how the always intelligent, always scary Kathy Mallory got that way. A serial killer's modus operandi involving stalking, hanging, and dead flies hits Mallory and her partner hard when one of the victims is a former prostitute who used to read Mallory bedtime stories when she was a homeless wild child. O'Connell neatly pairs the two story lines of Mallory's mysterious past and her current investigation even as she heightens the tension by alternating passages from the next victim's point of view. O'Connell delivers all the best parts of suspense fiction - plot twists, chilling details, and a rapid pace - while simultaneously delving into the psyche of her protagonists. She displays not only the dark horrors of the criminal mind but also what lurks in the hearts of those who try to protect us. Public libraries should buy multiple copies for their Mallory fans. - Devon Thomas, Hass MS&L, Ann Arbor, MI (c) Copyright 2010. Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.