Solar Eclipse [SIGNED COPY, FIRST PRINTING]

A car accident strands stuntwoman Shay Waco and her eleven-year-old daughter in an isolated area where they stumble on a drug-related multiple murder and find themselves desperately struggling with the vicious killers

Like Dean Koontz, suspense novelist Farris (Soon She Will Be Gone, 1997, etc.) once again seems to possess a knowledge of the physical world denied to most people. No shade of light, level of heat or cold, tree, plant, type of car, gun, creature, illness, aspect of anatomy, mode of any human activity, including cooking or murder, escapes his eye or handiness to name. The solar eclipse in the title here refers to murders in Solar County, California, all turning on drugs and money. Shay Waco, divorced mother of 11-year-old Pepper, is a stunt double for Demi Moore, as well as other actresses, and over the years has learned how to take immense falls without injury. Returning from a job and some gambling in Las Vegas, Shay and Pepper go astray in a storm and find themselves near a dam. Their Chevy sports utility vehicle is rammed off the road by a pickup, falls down a 60-degree slope, and lands for a moment on a weak tree. Shay and Pepper see the pickups driver now pushing a backhoe toward them, so they take a 70-foot freefall through black rain. Entering a nearby house to use the phone, Shay finds the entire Sinaloa family murdered at their kitchen table. The murderer, whose drug deals were being monitored by Sinaloa's eavesdropping skills, turns out to be Shay and Peppers mysterious assailant: he wanted no witnesses who could identify his truck. Soon Shay and Sheriff Tobin Bonner find themselves bound into a cat's-cradle of death and deception. Farris at his smoothest. -- Copyright ©1999, Kirkus Associates, LP. All rights reserved.

Ex-DEA agent Tobin Bonner, now comfortably settled as a Utah county sheriff, is surprised to discover just how hectic small-town law enforcement can be. This story about a murdered family, a rather twisted religious group, and a whole lot of deception and double-dealing should appeal to just about anyone who likes mainstream mystery fiction. Veteran crime novelist Farris once again demonstrates that he knows how to tell a story and develop characters. Bonner is an extremely likable protagonist, as is his sidekick, Shay Waco, a Hollywood stuntwoman who's come to Utah for a reunion with her estranged father. What's especially nice about this novel is the way it keeps getting more and more complicated (not to mention darker and darker), leaving readers wondering how Farris is possibly going to wrap it all up. Wrap it up he does, though not in a neat little package but in an exciting, skillful way that will leave readers gasping for breath. Not many suspense novels are as ambitiously intricate as this one; fewer still are as successful. David Pitt