Acquired Motives - Hardcover

Lovett, Sarah

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0679435603 ISBN 13: 9780679435600

Publisher: Villard, 1996

Synopsis

From the author of Dangerous Attachments comes a new novel of suspense featuring forensic psychologist Dr. Sylvia Strange. When her testimony inadvertenly leads to a rapist's acquittal, Dr. Sylvia Strange herself becomes the target of a bizarre serial murderer--a sadist who stalks killers released through legal loopholes.

About this title

About the Author

Sarah Lovett, formerly a researcher at the New Mexico State Penitentiary, is the author of Dangerous Attachments. Raised in California, she now lives in Santa Fe.


From the Paperback edition.

From the Back Cover

hor of Dangerous Attachments comes a new novel of suspense featuring forensic psychologist Dr. Sylvia Strange. When her testimony inadvertenly leads to a rapist's acquittal, Dr. Sylvia Strange herself becomes the target of a bizarre serial murderer--a sadist who stalks killers released through legal loopholes.

Reviews

Her name notwithstanding, Sylvia Strange is a fairly normal forensic psychologist; here, as in her debut (Dangerous Attachments), it is the world around her that is strange and disturbingly violent. After Sylvia's court testimony helps let sadistic rapist Anthony Randall go free, both she and the defendant pay. Randall is abducted, castrated and torched, and Sylvia is attacked and left a photo of the castrated rapist. Sylvia's lover, Matt England, on the murder case for the New Mexico State Police, is wary of a friend, AWOL FBI agent Dan Chaney, who crops up to convince Sylvia and Matt that the killer is an arms dealer the Bureau claims is dead. By the time a second sexual offender is torched, and it looks like Sylvia may have contributed to the death by overlooking problems with a client during his parole-mandated therapy sessions, Chaney's story sounds pretty good. Toss in Matt's ex-lover, a shaman with "a midnight full-moon healing ceremony" and a psychic who helps save the day, and this becomes a story for those who revel in excess: physical, psychological and spiritual. The path to the solution is convoluted and character-crowded, but Lovett successfully pulls the story's several strands together in the end. (Sept.) FYI: Simultaneous audio publication with the audio ($18, ISBN 0-679-43271-0).
Copyright 1996 Reed Business Information, Inc.

Forensic psychologist Sylvia Strange (Dangerous Attachments, 1995) tackles a vigilante who's executing unpunished rapists and murderers. Sylvia's current nightmare--you really wouldn't want to have this woman's dreams--begins when she's forced to testify on behalf of sadistic rapist Anthony Randall, who promptly walks when New Mexico state cop Erin Tulley, whose sexual-favoritism grievance has just been dismissed, testifies that he was non compos when he confessed. But somebody called the Killer, who's just waiting to redress this miscarriage of justice, kidnaps, terrorizes, emasculates, and sets Randall ablaze. An isolated nutcase, thinks Sylvia, until FBI agent Dan Chaney, still grieving over a shootout in Las Cruces that left his colleague and clandestine lover Nina Valdez dead, digs up evidence that links gunrunner Dupont White to Randall's killing, and at least one earlier experiment in homemade justice, and Sylvia begins to get phone calls, alternately piteous and threatening, from Dupont. The case would be perfect, if only Dupont hadn't been killed in Las Cruces too. But since he's dead (he is dead, isn't he?), why is the killer aping him, and who's crazy enough to try? Incredibly, almost the entire cast seems to qualify, from Dupont's psychotic girlfriend, Violet Miller, to his disturbed aunt, Jilly White, to self-styled psychic Benji Mu¤oz y Concha, frightened into catatonia by the Killer's handiwork, to erratic Dan Chaney to strung-out Sylvia herself, who tells her lover, state cop Matt England, to arrest and cuff her: ``I always need to understand, to evaluate every-fucking-thing and get inside it until I'm crazy.'' Long before Sylvia, skittering from one overgalvanized scene to the next, ends up identifying the Killer by uncovering the long-ago activities of the legendary Gentleman's Club, you'll be ready to sign commitment papers for the whole crew. A rip-roaring story done nearly to death by an overload of crazies on both sides of the law. (Author tour) -- Copyright ©1996, Kirkus Associates, LP. All rights reserved.

Lovett offers an exceptional plot, unusual characters, gripping suspense, and vivid forensic details in this offbeat but satisfying story. The nightmare begins for forensic psychologist Sylvia Strange when she is attacked by a terrifying apparition with a mud-smeared face. Then an FBI agent shows her a horrifying film of a man being burned alive, apparently by someone who was supposedly killed months earlier. Then a prison inmate becomes catatonic after claiming to have seen a giant owl of death, and another man is burned alive. Drawn to the terrifying case in spite of her fears, Sylvia investigates with the help of her lover, agent Matt England. Lovett's dark plot is gut wrenching and full of unexpected twists. She uses her New Mexico setting to fine effect, injecting a sense of New Age spirituality that's both calming and eerie. Best of all, though, is the complex and charismatic heroine, who can be as doubt ridden as she is strong and spirited. A potent novel. Emily Melton

Forensic psychologist Sylvia Strange (Dangerous Attachments, LJ 5/1/95), testifying for the defense, unwillingly aids in the acquittal of a psychopathic rapist, a fact which becomes a bone of contention between her and her lover, criminal agent Matt England. Upon his release from jail, however, the rapist unwittingly falls victim to a vigilante known as "Killer." Killer taunts Sylvia and Matt with Polaroids of his trussed kills?escapees from justice due to legal screw-ups?and stalks them while they attempt to find him. Cadenced prose, psychological insight, taut suspense, and the swift violence of a chilling plot makes this highly recommended.
Copyright 1996 Reed Business Information, Inc.

Edition details

• Publisher: Villard
• Publication date: 1996
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 0679435603
• ISBN 13: 9780679435600
• Binding: Hardcover
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 290