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Library | Call Number | Status |
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Searching... McMinnville Public Library | Flora, K. | Searching... Unknown |
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Summary
Summary
What happens when a child from a violent home is not safe in the hands of those assigned to protect him? For Timmy Watts, the answer is death. Timmy is found in a park, brutally stabbed yet carefully wrapped in a blanket. The case goes to DS Joe Burgess.
Author Notes
He has written fifteen books, including From Set Shot to Slam Dunk, an oral history of the NBA & Missy Hyatt, First Lady of Wrestling. He lives in New York City.
(Bowker Author Biography)
Reviews (3)
Kirkus Review
Det. Sgt. Joe Burgess, of the Portland Police Department, kisses off his summer vacation to catch whoever raped and murdered an unwanted little boy. After young Timothy Watts had been beaten, sodomized and stabbed, someone carefully washed his body, dressed him in a new pair of underpants, wrapped him in a clean blanket and dropped him off in a public park. The man who found his corpse refused to report it to the police, and his dog ran off with something--something blue, according to a second witness--he took from the scene. The case should be Terry Kyle's, but Terry's in such a funk about his ex-wife's legal schemes to get their kids away from him that he's drunk himself AWOL. So Joe (Playing God, 2006) gets the job of questioning witnesses like social worker Julie Gordon, who's sunk in guilt because she didn't rescue Timmy from the trash heap; accountant Regina McBride, who acts as if Timmy were trash; and Timmy's monstrous family, who act like trash themselves. As someone whose neglect by his relatives made him "everybody's child," Timmy has stirred deep passions. The ensuing complications will include arson, methamphetamines, pedophilia and physical attacks. Flora (Stalking Death, 2008, etc.) plots generously and gives her hero a heart as big as his sorely tried temper. But the characters' endlessly expressed opinions could have used pruning. Copyright ©Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.
Booklist Review
Portland Maine, homicide detective Joe Burgess is just about to leave on his well-deserved vacation when his boss asks him to investigate of murder of eight-year-old Timothy Watts. Timmy was found stabbed to death in a local park, wrapped in a brand new blanket. Burgess quickly finds out that Timmy had lived in squalor with parents who were unconcerned with his welfare when he was alive and are now indifferent to his death. Burgess promises the murdered child justice and begins an intensive investigation into his death, hampered by department politics and a media-loving, unreasonable police chief. Occasional hokey dialogue and preachiness about the wonderful men in blue mar the story, but framed by the gritty, realistic details of a homicide investigation, the intense pressure, both internal and external, for Burgess to find the killer, and its Portland setting, the book will appeal to true crime readers. However, the details of the crime and the vividly developed characters, especially Timmy, make the story is unbearably sad and difficult to read.--O'Brien, Sue Copyright 2008 Booklist
Library Journal Review
When the body of eight-year-old Timothy Watts is found wrapped in a blue blanket in a Portland, ME, park, homicide detective Joe Burgess (introduced in Playing God) vows to find the killer. Everyone in the neighborhood loved Timmy except his abusive family, but people are unwilling to talk. Even Iris, Timmy's deaf sister, will not share what she knows and soon goes missing. Then things get ugly when the press begins a personal attack on Burgess using information that could have come only from someone in the police department. Author of the Thea Kozak series and a true-crime writer (her Finding Amy: A True Story of Murder in Maine, cowritten with a career police officer, was nominated for an Edgar Award in 2007), Flora excels at portraying the police as real people with strengths and weaknesses who unite to bring some measure of justice to the dead and living alike. Flora's thought-provoking second police procedural marks her as one of the best in the genre. (c) Copyright 2010. Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.