Sweetheart
Chelsea Cain
St. Martin’s Minotaur, 2008
U.S. hardcover, first edition
ISBN 978-0-312-36847-0
336 pages; $24.95

This week I rebelliously decided I was tired not only of legal work, but also of reading books that I am obliged to read in order to review them. Sometimes even books I very much want to read become less pleasurable because I’ve committed to reviewing them. I guess the mind just rebels against any “must” in one’s life. All I wanted was to read something fun of my own choosing.

Chelsea Cain’s Sweetheart has been sitting on my shelf since I picked up a signed first edition at the wonderful M Is For Mystery bookstore about a year ago. After reading Heartsick, Cain’s first novel about serial killer Gretchen Lowell and Portland, Oregon, detective Archie Sheridan, I was convinced I’d get a good thrill ride out of the next novel in the series, and I was right.

Sweetheart opens with Gretchen still in prison; Archie has stopped his weekly visits to her to get more information about the 200 or so people she murdered. (She was convicted of killing 25 or so, and part of her plea agreement was that she would reveal more of the names of victims on open cases, but only to Archie.) Archie is living with his ex-wife and two children, though the husband/wife relationship isn’t exactly complete; Archie sleeps in his study. Archie remains terribly haunted by Gretchen, and longs to see her, even knowing what she is, even despite her torture of him to the point of death. When word comes that Gretchen has been beaten and raped in prison, and will identify her attacker only to Archie, he flies to her side.

Archie’s partner, Henry, watches as the two are reunited, and makes up his mind that enough is enough: he arranges to have Gretchen transferred to the eastern side of the state, far out of Archie’s easy reach. But Gretchen has played him; she escapes. And with that, the novel is off and running.

Watching Archie and Gretchen move together in a game of cat and mouse is only one of the pleasures in this book. We also watch Susan Ward, a newspaper reporter, maneuver for the crime beat when her mentor dies, mostly by attempting to discover whether her mentor’s death was the result of mere drunken driving or something far more sinister. Susan really comes into her own in this book, and is actually more of a viewpoint character than Archie; Archie’s attachment to a serial killer who tried her hardest to kill him is simply too hard to fathom for the average reader. It’s sort of like watching Clarice Starling and Hannibal Lector at the end of Thomas Harris’s Hannibal – not quite as hard to take, not quite as unbelievable, but tinkering right on the brink. Cain actually handles this situation more masterfully than Harris does, with an explanation that many may have seen coming, and that I should have but didn’t.

Cain tells her story in short chapters and punchy language – the formula for a bestselling thriller that won’t tax the reader in the slightest. There is no challenge to this book, no puzzle to work out, nothing but gore and a thrill on every page. Literature this ain’t. If a straightforward story full of suspense is what you like – and you know, during a summer week when I’m sick of work, I sure do – this is the perfect book for you.