Killer Weekend (Walt Fleming, 1) - Hardcover

Pearson, Ridley

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0399154078 ISBN 13: 9780399154072

Publisher: G. P. Putnam's Sons, 2007

Synopsis

Eight years ago, in Sun Valley - snowcapped playground for the wealthy and ambitious - all that stood between New York State attorney general Elizabeth Shaler and a knife-wielding killer was local patrolman Walt Fleming. Now Liz Shaler returns to Sun Valley as the crown jewel and keynote speaker for billionaire Patrick Cutter's world-famous C3, a media and communications conference where the richest, most powerful business tycoons converge. The attorney general, a political lightning rod, is expected to announce her candidacy for president. It's a media coup for Cutter - but a security nightmare for Walt Fleming, now the county sheriff.
As C3 gets under way, authorities learn of a confirmed threat on Shaler's life, and various competing interests - the Secret Service, the FBI, Cutter's own security forces - begin jockeying for jurisdiction. Beyond the logistical nightmare that the conference's opulent extravagances represent for Sheriff Fleming, he must also contend with a raft of other local concerns: his troubled nephew's arrest, his wife's infidelity, the death of a socialite under suspicious circumstances, and a series of apparent maulings by an aggressive cougar. Each of these incidents comes to a head just as Shaler's assassin puts his chillingly precise plan into action.

About this title

About the Author

Ridley Pearson is the author of more than twenty novels, including the Lou Boldt crime series, and several books for young readers. He and Dave Barry cowrote the award-winning children's novels Peter and the Starcatchers and Peter and the Shadow Thieves.

Reviews

Bestseller Pearson's workmanlike thriller, the first in a new series, has all the right ingredients: a down-to-earth hero, sheriff Walt Fleming; a neatly focused venue in the form of a weekend business conference at an Idaho resort; and a sense of impending danger in the form of a threat on the life of Elizabeth Shaler, the New York State attorney general, who's about to announce her candidacy for U.S. president. Shaler knows what it's like to be a victim. Eight years before the killer weekend of the title, she was attacked in her Sun Valley, Idaho, vacation home and saved by Fleming, then a patrolman. Fleming takes the present threat very seriously, but Shaler's handlers and the event's organizer, billionaire Patrick Cutter, won't cancel her speech. Fleming doggedly struggles to identify the assassin, who cleverly (if incredibly) overcomes massive security to infiltrate the event, but the motive for the threat is never satisfactorily explained. Pearson (Parallel Lies) tries hard to give his characters depth using an inventive array of backstories, but only the capable Fleming really comes across.
Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

*Starred Review* Eight years ago, Sun Valley, Idaho, sheriff Walt Fleming bravely thwarted an attempt on Attorney General Elizabeth Shaler's life. Now AG Shaler is back in town, poised to announce her candidacy for president at a three-day conference catering to the world's most prominent business leaders. The event is the brainchild of Patrick Cutter, a tycoon whose sybaritic lifestyle is a source of both scorn and awe. (He is but one example of the super-rich citizenry that's taken up residence in the once-quiet ski town.) There is no shortage of security for the proceedings--local police, Secret Service, and Cutter's own team--but it's not enough to deter a cunning assassin who slips seamlessly between a pair of identities. (His blind-man act is particularly impressive.) Meanwhile, Sheriff Fleming must cope with the suspicious death of a beautiful socialite and the breakup of his own marriage; it doesn't help matters that his deputy is sleeping with his ex-wife. This is the first in a new series for Pearson, whose cleverly interwoven plots and crisp, economical prose have graced more than a dozen thrillers, most notably the Lou Boldt-Daphne Matthews series. Pearson is the first American recipient of the Raymond Chandler/Fulbright Fellowship in detective fiction at Oxford University. The late, great creator of Philip Marlowe would be proud--both of the selection itself and of the recipient's latest work. Allison Block
Copyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved

Edition details

• Publisher: G. P. Putnam's Sons
• Publication date: 2007
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 0399154078
• ISBN 13: 9780399154072
• Binding: Hardcover
• Number of pages: 326