Tough, taut, and terse, this crafty crime novel challenges Chicago police detective Jimmy Parisi—the sharp, no-nonsense cop who first appeared in Cutter—with two terrible crimes separated by three decades. Thirty years ago, in the 1960s, seven student nurses met death at the butchering hands of an assailant who went unapprehended by the investigating officer Jake Parisi, Jimmy’s father. While Jake did uncover prime suspect Carl Angelin, he soon found himself without any witnesses; they’d all disappeared. Then so did Angelin. Now a frighteningly similar massacre has occurred, and Jimmy Parisi is racing against time and Angelin to locate the sole surviving witness of the original massacre, who’s been hidden by the FBI in a remote mental hospital. Only she can finger Angelin and bring justice to the seven victims and Jimmy’s tragically dead father.
Chicago homicide detective Jimmy Parisi tracks a savage killer whose crimes against young women mirror a series of thirty-year-old killings from the 1960s.The two major American traumas of the '60s-J.F.K.'s assassination and the Vietnam War-collide in Laird's second, less gruesome, thriller (after 2001's Cutter) to feature Chicago police detective Jimmy Parisi. Jimmy investigates the killings of two young nurses, which hark back to a similar unresolved case-the tortures and murders of seven nursing students in 1968-handled by his late father, Jake, also a police detective. Jimmy sees so many coincidences between the cases that he and his erudite partner, Doc Gibron, are sure it's the same suspect, Carl Anglin. The narration switches between Jimmy, in the present and near present, and Jake during the earlier case. Both men suffer the same frustrations in trying to nail down the slippery Anglin. As in Cutter, Laird's pacing is good, and he brings Jimmy and his rogue suspect to life; the other characters aren't as well formed. A witness to the original crimes, kept in drugged isolation by the Feds all these years, revives miraculously with an unbelievably cogent testimony. The alternating viewpoints make for countless repetitions, partly because the father and son tell the same story and partly because their obsessions cause them to rehash events and motives. Although Anglin's supposed connection with the Kennedy assassination becomes clear early on, Laird keeps the suspense churning as leads fall apart. (Mar. 14) Copyright 2003 Cahners Business Information.
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