Tim Hess is an old-school, hard-nosed detective whose dedication is beginning to wane due a recent cancer diagnosis. Merci Rayborn, however, is at the start of her police career, with every intention of getting to the top--at any price. The ill-matched duo is assigned to track down a brutal serial killer who has been abducting women from shopping malls. All that is left after his horrific crimes is a gruesome signature: purses full of entrails.

But where are the bodies? As Hess and Rayborn track down the "Purse Snatcher," they find their boss seems to have a hidden agenda, which could be creating false leads and allowing a monster to commit more atrocities.

As his two protagonists close in, Parker is particularly adroit at revealing the growing obsession that unites them in their pursuit. In masterful fashion, he goes to the grimmest recesses of the human soul, while balancing this with the humanity and resilience of his principals. Although the book has all the mordant energy the genre demands, it is the carefully chosen, almost poetic prose that brilliantly set off the horrors and creates a highly unusual reading experience: "Terrible sights. Hess had learned to forgive himself for them. Sometimes it made him sad to know he was like this. It was part of what made him good at what he did...but he could never unimagine what he saw." --Barry Forshaw

2006-08-16 Good cop bad cop