Outer Perimeter - Hardcover

Goddard, Ken

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0553108832 ISBN 13: 9780553108835

Publisher: Bantam, 2001

Synopsis

New York Times bestselling author Ken Goddard combines a stirring mystery and an exhilarating forensic thriller in this stunning follow-up to his critically acclaimed novel First Evidence. Here crime scene investigator Colin Cellars continues to pursue the truth behind the bizarre occurrences that so recently turned his life upside down, and his desperate hunt for a killer makes him deadly enemies on both sides of the law....

A man of reason and science, Colin Cellars has earned a reputation as a top crime scene investigator by using microscopic fragments of evidence to fill in the crucial missing pieces of a crime. But Cellars now finds himself disgraced because of a bizarre and violent episode -- an erotically charged encounter with a beautiful woman that led to a horrifying shoot-out right in front of his eyes. And what Cellars thinks he knows about the victim's identity -- and about her death -- has plunged him into a no-man's-land ... and a deadly search for a killer who may or may not be quite of this world.

Meanwhile, as Cellars investigates a case involving dozens of missing victims and a constantly vanishing trail of evidence, he realizes that the three people he trusts most each hold a piece to the puzzle -- one that includes evidence that defies all known technical analysis. And these three individuals -- the woman he loves, a man he has defended with his life, and a friend with ties to the most clandestine wing of the U.S. government -- seem to have their own ideas about what to do with the information.

As Cellars and his team get closer to the truth, the stakes continue to rise. For the hunters are about to become the hunted: victims of a deadly game whose rules they can't understand, whose players they cannot predict. And their few advantages are rapidly disappearing.

A novel of relentless suspense that ranges from the forests of the Pacific Northwest to the secret high-tech laboratories of the NSA, Outer Perimeter is a stunningly vivid, fast-paced tale in which nothing is as it appears and the facts point to conclusions that seem all but impossible. Most of all, it is a chilling and unforgettable voyage that takes readers through tunnels of violence and intrigue -- and out into the unknown....

About this title

Review

With Outer Perimeter, Ken Goddard, the author of seven previous novels of suspense and science fiction beginning with 1983's Balefire, returns to the Oregon of his 1999 SF thriller, First Evidence. And he's brought the disgraced crime scene investigator, Detective Sergeant Colin Cellars of the Oregon State Police, and his shape-shifting, silicon-based, extraterrestrial life forms with him.

Cellars, understandably, isn't in tight with his superiors just now. It seems that he and some friends (Bobby Dawson, forensic scientist and Cellars's erstwhile girlfriend Jody Catlin, and the NSA's Dr. Malcolm Byzor) recently blasted to smithereens a slew of police vehicles. They explained that the whole thing wouldn't have happened if they had not been in a life-or-death struggle with invisible, immensely intelligent, coldly murderous space aliens with half a mind to destroy civilization unless they reclaim some missing baggage.

Still, some 50 locals have disappeared, officers have been killed or nearly killed, DEA agents are lurking about, and the NSA has set up housekeeping in a "black operation" in the nearby piney woods. With that, OSP Internal Affairs Commander Hightower and watch commander Bauer have little choice but to turn Cellars and his coconspirators loose--but they ask him to please not rewrite those reports.

Cellars' eyebrows furrowed in surprise. "Why not?"

"Think about it. At the moment, given the discussion she and I just had with [police psychologist] Pleausant before you got here, there's no official reason why we can't put you back on the street immediately, and there's every good reason why we should. But if you were to write and sign an official report in which you claim to have killed a shape-changing extraterrestrial who immediately morphed into a small rock--"

"Ah."

A reasonably well-written (excepting a ridiculously expository phone conversation early on) if standard outing, this occasionally humorous, mostly engaging, and sometimes downright suspenseful book will, if nothing else, encourage you to revisit those early X-Files episodes you've been meaning to watch. --Michael Hudson

About the Author

Ken Goddard is the author of seven previous novels, including the New York Times bestseller Balefire. He has served as a criminalist in three California police and sheriff's departments, and as an instructor in crime scene investigation and forensic techniques at law enforcement academies throughout the United States as well as for Interpol. He lives in Ashland, Oregon, where he is currently director of the National Fish and Wildlife Forensics Laboratory, the only full-service wildlife crime laboratory in the world.

About this edition

• Publisher: Bantam
• Publication date: 2001
• ISBN 10: 0553108832
• ISBN 13: 9780553108835
• Binding: Hardcover
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 448