Afterimage (Chris Sinclair) - Softcover

Brandon, Jay

3.48

56 ratings by Goodreads

9780812540444: Afterimage (Chris Sinclair)

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0812540441 ISBN 13: 9780812540444

Publisher: Tor Books, 2000

View all copies of this ISBN edition:

District Attorney Chris Sinclair has never really forgotten his first real love, Jean, a college girlfriend from the era of free love, a wild young woman who introduced him to a world of sex and drugs and alcohol drastically unlike is own. But she left his life in college and he's never seen her since, until a young woman is found buried in a shallow grave on the outskirts of San Antonio. Through forensic reconstruction of the decomposed skull, a face takes shape. A detail or two is different, but there's no doubt the face is Jean's, like an after image in his mind, he sees her face in the young girl's and he knows. What he doesn't know is why Jean wouldn't have reported her own daughter's disappearance; the body had been buried for months.

"synopsis" may belong to another edition of this title.

Review:

District Attorney Chris Sinclair is stunned by the resemblance between the forensically reconstructed face of a 14-year-old murder victim and the college sweetheart he hasn't seen for almost two decades. Although the girl was gone from home for three months before her body was found in a shallow grave on the outskirts of San Antonio, she'd never been reported missing. And when Chris finds her mother, Jean, he discovers two more equally shocking facts: Kristen, the murdered teenager, has an older sister, Clarissa, who is Chris's own daughter; and Clarissa is missing too.

Sinclair's troubled feelings compel his very personal interest in saving the child he's never met, and in tracking down the presumed perpetrator of both crimes--a shadowy Fagin-like businessman named Raleigh Pentell who controls a gang of young thieves and supplies them and their classmates with illegal drugs as well. Managing to rescue Clarissa from her captivity, Chris assembles a difficult and circumstantial case against Pentell. But in the process of bringing him to justice, Chris discovers that Jean, who lived a little outside the law when they were lovers, may have been involved in her daughters' murder and abduction.

While the denouement is a bit long in coming, the growing relationships between Chris and his daughter and between Clarissa and adolescent psychologist Anne Greenwald, Chris's fianc�e, are enough to sustain one's interest until the end; Brandon is an accomplished writer with atypical insight into his characters' emotional lives, which are movingly explicated. Jean remains an enigma and not as fully explored as she might have been. Although not an entirely sympathetic figure, she lingers in the reader's mind after the other characters have faded away. --Jane Adams

About the Author:

Jay Brandon is the author of twelve critically acclaimed novels, including the Edgar Award-nominated Fade the Heat. As an attorney, Brandon has practiced at the highest criminal court in Texas, the Court of Criminal Appeals. He continues to practice family and criminal law. Brandon lives in San Antonio with his wife and three children.

"About this title" may belong to another edition of this title.