Summer of Fear - Hardcover

Parker, T. Jefferson

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0312093969 ISBN 13: 9780312093969

Publisher: St Martins Pr, 1993

Synopsis

While a serial killer butchers entire families in Orange County, crime writer Russ Monroe investigates the murder of his ex-lover and finds himself caught in a duplicitous web involving the city's homicide chief. 100,000 first printing. $100,000 ad/promo.

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Reviews

Timeworn thriller conventions are skillfully recycled in this suspenseful tale of serial murder and misdirection in California's Orange County. When reporter/crime writer Russell Monroe finds his former lover brutally slain in an apparently ritual style, he suspects a connection to other recent murders in the county. Somehow, the case never appears on the police blotter--although Russell saw his former colleague, homicide chief Marty Parish, leaving the scene of the crime--and soon all evidence of the death disappears. Meanwhile, a string of killings continues in the same gruesome style, and Russell becomes the contact of the deranged man responsible. As the writer gets dangerously entangled in this deadly intrigue, his wife Isabella fights a terminal brain tumor. While this material may sound hopelessly hackneyed, Parker ( Laguna Heat ; Pacific Beat ) delivers it in a surehanded narrative notable for taut pacing and plot twists that keep the reader wondering whom to trust. Russell's desperate first-person narrative voice is convincing and often gripping. 100,000 first printing; major ad/promo.
Copyright 1993 Reed Business Information, Inc.

In three novels, Parker (Pacific Beat; Little Saigon; Laguna Beach) has proven himself a master of the California thriller. So he can be forgiven for this ill-crafted amalgam of serial-killer chiller and tragic love story. Parker's narrator here is Russ Monroe, true-crime author and reporter for the Laguna Journal. As the story begins, two calamities plague Monroe: the slow death of his wife, Isabella, from a brain tumor; and the murder of his ex-lover, supermodel Amber Mae Wilson, whose savaged body Monroe finds in her home. Amber's death bears the hallmarks of the serial killer known as the Midnight Eye--except that, just before Monroe entered Amber's home, he spied Amber's ex-husband, Laguna homicide cop Martin Parish, wiping fingerprints off the outside gate. When the crime isn't reported, Monroe returns to the killing ground and finds the body missing but Parish lurking about. Monroe suspects Parish of the crime, while Parish claims innocence and accuses, then tries to frame, Monroe: Both are in Amber's will. But soon Amber herself surfaces--the victim was in fact her look-alike sister, Alice--even as Monroe and Amber's daughter turns up (did she help do away with Alice?), and as the Midnight Eye takes to calling Monroe at home, ranting about his crimes. Meanwhile, Isabella deteriorates--and endures an operation--as Monroe grieves for her and for his inability to save her, despite his pleasure in helping to i.d. the Midnight Eye, who escapes to N.Y.C. And then yet another possible Alice-killer surfaces--and he owns a copy of Bret Easton Ellis's American Psycho.... A soggy, slow-moving fog--out of which, however, the subplot of the writer and his doomed wife glows with heart-stirring radiance. (First printing of 100,000) -- Copyright ©1993, Kirkus Associates, LP. All rights reserved.

Any fan of Parker's previous work will queue up to read about a serial killer in Orange County who wipes out entire families. Russ Monroe, ex-cop turned writer, wants to know why the police are so secretive and why they have obliterated all evidence of his ex-lover's murder.
Copyright 1993 Reed Business Information, Inc.

Edition details

• Publisher: St Martins Pr
• Publication date: 1993
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 0312093969
• ISBN 13: 9780312093969
• Binding: Hardcover
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 359