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Summary
Summary
A heat wave has struck Hampstead, Kansas, and Susan Wren, police chief of the sweltering town, has a vile flu. She struggles to keep up with work piling on her desk, while also dealing with a troubled teenage girl, a delusional World War II veteran, and a rookie cop who needs to be fired before her enthusiasm and inexperience get someone killed. If this weren't enough to contend with, trouble from the outside world enters the small town.
Cary Black is new in Hampstead, hiding out from her abusive policeman husband, Mitch. The woman she was to stay with has disappeared, and Cary, not wanting to alert the police, assumes the woman's identity. Mitch will stop at nothing to recover his wife, but when he tries, he'll be on Police Chief Susan Wren's turf.
This seventh entry in the highly praised series is the most thrilling and suspenseful yet. Charlene Weir weaves an intricate tale and Susan Wren encounters every obstacle she meets with courage and resourcefulness.
Author Notes
Charlene Weir's first novel, The Winter Widow, won the SMP/Malice Domestic Contest for Best First Traditional Mystery Novel. She lives in El Cerrito, California.
Reviews (4)
Publisher's Weekly Review
Police chief Susan Wren puzzles out the crimes directly and coincidentally linked to battered woman Cary Black, who flees California for Hampstead, Kans., to escape her abusive husband, cop Mitch Black, in Weir's dark, skillfully plotted seventh outing (after 2003's Up in Smoke). Cary's contact in Kansas, Kelby Oliver, appears to have vanished, so a desperate Cary temporarily assumes her identity. But when Cary hears a friend back in California was murdered, she knows it's only a matter of time until her husband finds her. What she doesn't know is that Kelby Oliver has enemies of her own, who are also out for retribution. Susan digs up the file from the brutal rape and murder of Lily Farmer two years earlier and pieces together clues to the threats facing Cary and Kelby. Blending the murderous and mundane, Weir deftly ties up the many threads of her tale. (Mar.) (c) Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved
Kirkus Review
A battered wife seeks shelter in Kansas only to be stalked by two men, one of them a deranged killer. Cary Black is an enabler who's allowed her policeman husband Mitch to go through countless cycles alternating between severe beatings and protestations of undying love. Finally, her attorney friend Arlette convinces her to flee and finds shelter for her in small-town Kansas. Cary arrives in Hampstead to find Kelby Oliver missing. Petrified that Mitch will find her, Cary is also going blind, a grim fate for a woman whose only solace has been reading. Desperate, she moves into Kelby's house and slowly takes over her identity, even getting a job caring for a stroke victim. She doesn't know that Kelby, the only holdout on a jury seeking the death penalty for a brutal rape-murder, has gotten death threats and gone into hiding. When Kelby's sister, unable to reach her, calls the local police, Chief Susan Wren (Up in Smoke, 2003, etc.) can't do much about an adult who refuses to call her relatives. But accident-prone rookie Ida Rather develops an interest in the reclusive Kelby/Cary that can't lead anywhere good. In time, Cary finds Kelby's body, answering one question but raising another: Will Kelby's murderer find Cary before Mitch does? Chief Wren takes a back seat in this tense, believable tale of compulsion and mania. Copyright ©Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.
Booklist Review
The Susan Wren series continues with the case of a woman who has left her abusive husband and now lives in constant fear that he will track her down. But neither she nor her husband has reckoned on police chief Susan Wren, who is a lot tougher than she first appears. While the story may be a bit familiar--women on the run from abusive husbands are plentiful in the mystery genre--Weir's handling of the theme is fresh and energetic. She writes with a hard edge and a wicked sense of humor, and her characters often threaten to lunge right off the page. --David Pitt Copyright 2007 Booklist
Library Journal Review
Cary Black must get away from her abusive husband. One day he is going to kill her, and she believes that he will be able to cover it up because he is a policeman. A friend persuades her to leave, telling her how, and soon Cary is on a bus heading for Kansas, where she will stay with a woman she has never met. What she does not know is that the woman has fled to the rural Midwest to get away from a stalker determined to kill her. In this seventh Susan Wren novel, Weir has captured the abject terror of women victims. She knows how to write a story so full of suspense and danger that it is impossible to put down until the last page is turned. She delivers in much the same way as J.A. Jance does in her books about Joanna Brady. Weir lives in El Cerrito, CA. (c) Copyright 2010. Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.