Blind Alley (Eve Duncan Series #4) by Iris Johansen
BUY IT NEW
- $7.99 Online price$7.19 Member price(Save 10%)Limited Time Offer! Everyone receives the Member Price on books.
See Details
Reserve it at BN.com & pick it up in 60 minutes at your local store.
Enter a zip code
(Mass Market Paperback - Reprint)
- Pub. Date: March 2005
- 352pp
- Sales Rank: 21,204
| More Formats | |
|---|---|
| Available in eBook | $6.39 |
| Audio - Abridged, 3 Cassettes, 5 hrs. | $23.75 |
| Compact Disc - Abridged, 4 CDs, 5 hrs. | $23.75 |
| MP3 Book - Abridged | $12.43 |
Buy it Used: 825 copies from $1.99 See All Available
Customers who bought this also bought
Product Details
- Pub. Date: March 2005
- Publisher: Bantam Books
- Format: Mass Market Paperback, 352pp
- Sales Rank: 21,204
- Series: Eve Duncan Series, #4
- ISBN-13: 9780553586503
- ISBN: 0553586505
- Edition Description: Reprint
Synopsis
The New York Times bestselling author of Firestorm, Iris Johansen, returns with a psychological thriller so terrifying, so relentlessly paced, it won’t leave you time to catch your breath before the next shock comes. A forensic sculptor is locked in a deadly duel with a serial killer determined to destroy her—one life at a time.
Eve Duncan’s job is to put a face on the faceless victims of violent crimes. Her work not only comforts their survivors—but helps catch their killers. But there is another, more personal reason that Eve Duncan is driven to do the kind of work she does—a dark nightmare from a past she can never bury. And as she works on the skull of a newly discovered victim, that past is about to return all over again.
The victim is a Jane Doe found murdered, her face erased beyond recognition. But whoever killed her wasn’t just trying to hide her identity. The plan was far more horrifying. For as the face forms under Eve’s skilled hands, she is about to get the shock of her life. The victim is someone she knows all too well. Someone who isn’t dead. Yet.
Instantly Eve’s peaceful life is shattered. The sanctuary of the lakeside cottage she shares with Atlanta detective Joe Quinn and their adopted daughter Jane has been invaded by a killer who’s sent the grimmest of threats: the face of his next victim. To stop him, Eve must put her own life in the balance and question everything and everyone she trusts. Not even Quinn can go where Eve must go this time.
As the trail of faceless bodies leads to a chilling revelation, Eve finds herself trying to catch a master murderer whose grisly work is atestament to a mind warped by perversion and revenge. Now she must pit her skills against his in a showdown where the stakes are life itself—and where the unbearable cost of failure will make Eve’s own murder seem like a mercy killing.
Publishers Weekly
Forensic sculptor Eve Duncan returns in this far-fetched but expertly plotted, eminently entertaining novel. When detective Joe Quinn is called to investigate the murder of a young woman whose skin has been peeled away from her skull, he presses the overloaded Eve to work her grisly magic. Eve is shocked to realize that the victim bears an uncanny resemblance to Jane MacGuire, the headstrong 17-year-old she and Joe have adopted, and who was already menaced by another serial killer in 1999's The Killing Game. Then a suspicious inspector from Scotland Yard, Mark Trevor, arrives with the grim news that a string of women with similar features have been murdered in Italy, England and Spain. A serial killer he calls Aldo has been working his way around the globe, butchering women who look like Cira, a beautiful young actress from the ancient Roman city of Herculaneum (which was destroyed by the eruption of Mt. Vesuvius), whom he holds responsible for his father's death (such is the logic of the insane). Since Jane looks like Cira (and, incidentally, has been having nightmares about being her and trying to escape the volcano's destruction) she will be his prey or bait. Johansen fans will recall that Eve lost her biological daughter, Bonnie, to a serial killer, so her desire to bring Aldo to justice is tied up with her still-sharp grief. Meanwhile, Jane behaves like a typical teenager, living in denial of her own mortality while feeling intoxicated by the sexy air of peril that now surrounds her. Aldo never comes fully into focus as a villain, but that doesn't matter much, since one of the real engines of fear in the novel is Jane's burgeoning sexuality. (Sept.) Copyright 2004 Reed Business Information.
More Reviews and RecommendationsBiography
While Iris Johansen's style has evolved over the years, the same skill that made her "one of the leading authors of romance fiction" (Barbara Kemp) has helped establish her reputation in a broader field. As Catherine Coulter noted, "Iris Johansen is a bestselling author for the best reason -- she's a wonderful storyteller."
More About the AuthorCustomer Reviews
- Reader Rating:
- Ratings: 31Reviews: 20
- See All Reviews
4 out of 5by Bode
Reader Rating:
See Detailed Ratings
January 18, 2009: I give this book four out of five stars. The characters were really set up nicely, switching between a thousand years ago to modern times, usually when that happens, the story gets confusing, but not in this book. The writing style of Iris Johansen is very good. It is pretty original. The book cover confused me at first, but when you read into it a couple of chapters, you can see who and why the person is running in the tunnel/alley. The story is very dramatic and thrilling.
I Also Recommend: The Killing Game (Eve Duncan Series #2), Countdown (Eve Duncan Series #5).
Awful, and forgettable besides.by Anonymous
Reader Rating:
See Detailed Ratings
October 05, 2008: I bought this book on a whim from a grocery store. The book was awful right from the start. I suppose Eve is supposed to serve as a role model for the modern woman, who integrates professional work with creativity by being a forensic sculptor who uses her female intuition for guidance, but that kind of idealized, implausible mix grated on me, like something out of a Harlequin romance. The overused movie theme of a young person in danger is mindlessly thrown into the plot here, in the form of 17-year-old Jane being stalked by a serial killer. And the overused device of making a teenager more realistic by making them unusually mature is also mindlessly thrown in, no doubt to cover up the author's inadequacy of not being able to capture the Weltanschauungen of a young person. The extraordinary coincidence that Eve's work brings her own stepdaughter into a police case, the paranormal dreams, the excessive adeptness of the stalking murderer, the artificially contrived sexual tension between an adult man and a slightly underaged teen all grated on me. I had to force myself to get through this book. I don't even remember exactly how it ended, though I believe it used the ridiculous, standard movie theme of having the recurring dreams come true, which was so predictable and so unrealistic that the end was at least as bad as the body of the book. Awful!
Loading...