The Triggerman's Dance - Hardcover

Parker, T. Jefferson

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0786861428 ISBN 13: 9780786861422

Publisher: Hyperion, 1996

Synopsis

The senseless murder of Rebecca Harris leads the two men in her life--Joshua Weinstein, a Jewish FBI agent and her fiance+a7, and her lover, journalist John Menden--to join forces to find her killer, a quest that leads to a vicious right-wing fascist organization.

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Reviews

Through four California-set novels (most recently, Summer of Fear, 1993), Parker has proved himself a gifted thriller writer, his suspenseful plots enriched by fertile prose and characters whose depths are revealed in the harsh light of violence. The author's fifth novel, a taut tale of a man undercover, will enhance his reputation. Orange County Journal reporter Rebecca Harris had two men in her life?her lover and former colleague, John Menden, and her fiance, FBI agent Joshua Weinstein. Now Rebecca is dead, killed by a sniper who meant to slay a left-wing columnist. Weinstein spends the six months after the shooting building a file on the man behind Rebecca's death: ex-FBI agent Vann Holt, now operating a private security firm in the California hills, is incensed at the columnist for her role, years earlier, in the vengeance-killing of Holt's son. Weinstein calls on Menden, a blond WASP, to infiltrate Holt's organization and find solid evidence linking Holt to Rebecca's death. Menden's mission grows more complicated when somebody close to Holt begins to feed the newsman incriminating information about Holt, and especially when Menden begins to fall for Holt's daughter, with whom the newsman can be neither honest nor close, for Rebecca's death is still an open wound?or is it? The narrative flows smoothly between present and past tense, floating the reader into ever darker, more mysterious waters. Ultimately, this is a novel of questions, not answers?questions about identity, shifting loyalties and the price of vengeance?and therein, as much as in its crafty plotting, lies its intelligence and excitement. $125,000 ad/promo; author tour.
Copyright 1996 Reed Business Information, Inc.

An overcooked revenge fantasy from a sometime (some other time) master of the genre (Summer of Fear, 1993, etc.). When intern Rebecca Harris was shot down in mistake for her boss, Orange County Journal columnist Susan Baum, she left two inconsolable mourners behind: her fianc‚, FBI agent Joshua Weinstein, and her secret lover, Journal reporter John Menden. Six months later, Menden's retired to a small-town paper and a dilapidated trailer, but Weinstein hasn't wasted his time: He's satisfied himself that Rebecca was killed by Vann Holt, a Feebee- turned-private-security-king, who was out for revenge against Baum's public defense of the man who killed Holt's own son and left his wife paralyzed. Weinstein, who doesn't have enough on Holt to put him away, wants Menden to meet-cute with the target, worm his way into Liberty Ridge, the Holt compound, and get the goods on him. So Menden, via an elaborate FBI-scripted scenario, saves Holt's eligible daughter Valerie from a fate worse than death, runs the gauntlet of suspicious underlings at Liberty Ridge, and finds things getting entirely too cozy. Carolyn Holt is convinced he's her dead son; Valerie is coming on to him like a house afire; and soon Menden is ablaze, too. Meantime, Holt's thuggish assistant Lane Fargo is upping his surveillance on the interloper, and the FBI is warned that they have only six more days to close the case before they're pulled off. Does any of this sound familiar? All right, the original stroke here--the tear-soaked alliance between Weinstein and Menden--is handled with all the intensity you'd expect from Parker; but it isn't enough to justify the ill-advised presumption, signaled by gallons of pressure on our man Menden, that we don't all know exactly where this is all headed. Well-turned-out, if you can ignore the striking lack of originality. But it does seem unwise to pit such familiar fare against summer reruns on TV. ($125,000 ad/promo budget; author tour) -- Copyright ©1996, Kirkus Associates, LP. All rights reserved.

Rebecca Harris, a young intern at an Orange County newspaper, is gunned down right outside the paper's offices after being mistaken for a fire-breathing columnist. The victim's just-spurned fianceis a driven, intense FBI agent named Joshua Weinstein; her new lover is a reporter at the paper. Each man is aware of the other. Each is shattered by Rebecca's death. Weinstein knows who is responsible--a brilliant former agent who became a reclusive right-wing madman after his son was murdered. But Weinstein doesn't have enough evidence for an arrest, so he talks the girl's lover into going undercover to gather proof. William Faulkner once observed that the only thing truly worth writing about is the human heart in conflict with itself. Parker seems to have applied that dictum in the service of a thriller, and it has paid off handsomely. This novel boasts half a dozen strong, complex, and deeply conflicted characters as well as enough tension and excitement to please most crime fans. Thomas Gaughan

Edition details

• Publisher: Hyperion
• Publication date: 1996
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 0786861428
• ISBN 13: 9780786861422
• Binding: Hardcover
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 356