2007-07-01 Evan Delaney deals with hookers, guns and money and it costs her big time

Evan Delaney is called to an accident site on Highway 1, where her father's car has gone off the road. However, she quickly discovers that there is no body. The authorities think Phil was trying to fake a suicide because, well, the authorities are usually missing a brick or two: a car falling off a cliff into the Pacific Ocean, then you might expect not to find a body, but a car falling into a ravine? Then Evan gets a phone call and she is informed her father has been kidnapped. She has 72 hours to find something to exchange for his life and it will involve taking her far away from Southern California, fleeing from not only the feds but also some rather unusual assassins, and whatever this is about has something to do with Jax Rivera. Meanwhile, Jesse finally checks his answering machine and finds a desperate message from Phil, telling him to keep Evan out of this at all costs: if not, Phil's family will become part of the kill chain. Of course, it is way too late for Jesse to keep Evan clear of this mess and the chase is on.

Because this is basically a chase story, this one ends up having less of Gardiner's trademark humor because, frankly, there is not a lot of time for that kind of stuff this time around. I read most of "Kill Chain" thinking this was the least impressive of the Evan Delaney thrillers to date, in part because I really enjoyed the previous story, Crosscut, but also because by the time you get to the fifth novel the formula is really becoming obvious. With Evan Delaney it is always personal and she is starting to run out of people in her life (of course, the solution to that is to add more people to her life). I was wrestling with whether I would be rounding up or down on "Kill Chain," and then starting to think I was going to have to go with a straight 4 star rating. That was, until I got to the endgame. Gardiner has been getting more and more cinematic in terms of the stunts, but in these last two books she has been working on damaging Evan's psyche as well as her body. But as the opening lines of this novel warn us: "Don't ever pray for insight. You're liable to get it." The end of this book really represents one step forward, and two giant steps backwards for our heroine and I can only wonder where does Evan go from here?

Between the author's name and the title of the book appears the words: "Hookers, Guns and Money. Everybody Pays," and, yes, a certain Warren Zevon song was immediately lodged in my mind. I see you can get this paperback from Amazon, which is a vast improvement from when I first tried to track them down and had to get four of the give from Amazon.uk (I never thought to look north of the border). My paperback edition came from across the pond with a faux sticker on the cover with Stephen King's quote delcaring "She is up there with Michael Connelly and Lee Child." King raving about Gardiner's books on his website and in "Entertainment Weekly" may well have increased her readership to the point that there are more of us who checked out China Lake and the rest of these books because of his recommendation than there are those who lucked out by being onboard from the very beginning. Now I feel bad because I have no idea who those writers are, but since I am now all caught up on Gardiner's novels and have yet to pick up any sort of hint to when the next book comes out (yes, I will upgrade to hardback, because I am not waiting for the next paperback sometime in 2008), I might have to check out Connelly and Child. After all, they are up there with Meg Gardiner.