Crime School

Overview

Over the course of six novels, Carol O'Connell has become one of our most acclaimed writers of suspense. Her heroine, Kathy Mallory, is "stunningly unique" (Milwaukee Journal Sentinel). "O'Connell conjures up a world of almost Faulkerian richness and complexity," said People, and the Chicago Tribune wrote simply, "O'Connell has raised the standard for psychological thrillers."

A wild child turned New York City policewoman, Mallory was adopted off the streets as a small girl. Very little has ever really been known about what happened to her back then, how she lived-but the past is about to come alive. Crime School begins with the discovery of a woman found hanging in a burning apartment, tufts of her own blond hair stuck in her mouth and red candles scattered all around. Immediately, Mallory knows several things. The fire was set so the woman would be discovered. The crime is identical to another one twenty years old. And she knows this woman. She is a prostitute named Sparrow, who took her in all those many years ago, and then betrayed her. There is unfinished business between Mallory and Sparrow, and the quest to settle it will send her spinning back to a time of secrets and desperation, and into the mind of a criminal whose work has only just begun.

Editorial Reviews

In this seventh gripping entry in O'Connell's popular Mallory series, Special Crimes investigator Kathy Mallory again prowls the mean streets of New York, digging deeper into her past even as she and her cohorts ferret out a grisly serial killer. Each novel in the series reveals a little more about the utterly improbable and compellingly mythic life story of its protagonist, a tough cop and computer ace raised by hookers on the streets of New York. In this installment, Mallory's particular mentor, the prostitute Sparrow, is found partially scalped, hanging in a room decorated with jars of dead flies an M.O. that recalls a murderer from decades ago. The grim murder plot is offset by a cast of cartoony characters, ranging from series regular Charles Butler, Mallory's gentle giant best friend, to the rookie yellow-haired detective Ronald Deluthe, aka Duck Boy. O'Connell illuminates these oddballs with her lightly whimsical prose: "When Charles closed his tired eyes, he saw a tiny thief who ran with whores and lived by guile, surviving on animal instinct to get through the night an altogether admirable child." The side puzzle, a bibliomystery involving a series of pulp Westerns that obsessed Mallory as a girl, almost steals the show when it is solved. This novel is gritty, streetwise, funny and sure to bring in more fans for the still-enigmatic Mallory.
Copyright 2002 Reed Business Information, Inc

Author Information

Bio of Carol O'Connell

Carol O'Connell is the author of eight previous Mallory novels, including the national bestseller Winter House, and of Judas Child.

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Additional Info

Imprint

Penguin

Filesize

1.62 MB

Number of Pages

416

eBook ISBN

9781436276399