On New Year's Eve 1999 there's a multiple murder at a Blockbuster in Linden, New Jersey. As the store is closing, a killer enters the premises, stabs the manager and three teenage girls to death, and leaves one girl, Ella, injured but alive.
An anonymous caller provides information about the alleged perpetrator, a high school boy named Vince Whitaker, who's soon arrested.
A public defender gets Whitaker released for insufficient evidence and the boy promptly disappears. This leads to a shake-up in law enforcement and public defender circles.
Fifteen years later, a similar tragedy occurs in a Linden, New Jersey ice cream shop.
Three teenage girls who work in the store are killed, and one girl, Jesse, is injured but alive.
Suspicions surface that the killer might be Vince Whitaker.....or perhaps a copycat.
Survivor Jesse is in shock following the ice cream store incident and refuses to speak to anyone, including the police. However the high school principal, Mr. Steadman, gets the idea that Jesse might speak to Ella, the survivor of the Blockbuster tragedy. Jesse opens up to Ella (a little) but Jesse is a hard case who grew up in the foster care system and is wary of everyone.
The story is told from the rotating points of view of three individuals:
Ella - who became a therapist after surviving the Blockbuster stabbings; Ella is a troubled woman who routinely sneaks around and cheats on her fiancé.
FBI Agent Sarah Keller - Sara is a badass detective who's 8 months pregnant with twins. After the ice cream shop murders Keller is assigned the task of searching for Blockbuster suspect Vince Whitaker, who's been missing for 15 years. (It's hard to believe a woman nearing the end of her pregnancy - with twins no less - can run around like Sarah, but it's fiction after all. 🙂)
Chris - a public defender who happens to be Vince Whitaker's younger brother. Chris was adopted after the Blockbuster killings and changed his name, so one one knows the men are brothers. Chris thinks Vince is innocent and hopes to prove it.
As the three narrators go about their business, one secret after another is revealed. The story is gripping and holds the reader's attention. My major quibble with the book is that the Linden police have tunnel vision and compromise the investigation in various ways. To me, this isn't totally realistic, but it's necessary for the plot to work.
All in all, an entertaining thriller.
Rating: 3.5 stars
No comments:
Post a Comment