Evil at Heart
Chelsea Cain
St. Martin’s Minotaur, 2009
U.S. hardcover, first edition
ISBN 978-0-312-36848-7
320 pages; $24.99

There is a special pleasure to reading several entries in a series one right after the other. Part of it is delayed gratification: despite the arrival of a book you’ve hungered after a year ago, or even several books over the past several years, you haven’t read it/them; you’ve waited. Now you have a book or two (or three or more) all set in the same universe, and you can live there for days on end while you read all the books. At times like these, the real world fades out and you are more alive in the fictional world of the books you hold in your hands.

After reading Sweetheart (reviewed here), I immediately picked up Evil at Heart. I was hard-pressed to imagine how Chelsea Cain would keep the Archie Sheridan/Gretchen Lowell relationship going for another book without going completely over the top. (Sweetheart was already rather uncomfortably Hannibal-ish for my taste – that is, the good guy had too much seemed to become a willing pawn of the sociopath who drives the action.)

Cain succeeds admirably in this new novel by introducing the possibility of copycat killers out there in a world that’s infatuated with the idea of Gretchen Lowell. Despite the fact that the woman is one of the most truly vicious serial killers I’ve ever come across in fiction, huge swaths of the public are delighted that she has escaped from prison. They wear tee shirts urging, “Run, Gretchen, run!” They have websites extolling her praises. And, very possibly, some of them take their anti-hero worship to the next extreme by killing in her style.

When the book opens, Archie has been a patient at the Providence Medical Center psych ward for two months, kicking his addiction to Vicodin and overcoming his suicidal tendencies. In fact, though, his addiction is long gone, his liver is recovering, and he doesn’t feel particularly suicidal any longer; but he refuses to check himself out of the hospital, insisting that he is still a danger to himself in order to prolong his stay. It’s much easier than dealing with the fact that his marriage will not be resurrected, Gretchen will not become a woman he can love and live with, and his career is verging on destruction if the full extent of his relationship with Gretchen becomes known. Archie moves himself to leave the ward for a day, though – or at least his partner, Henry Sobol, moves him – when body parts are discovered in the toilet at a Columbia River Gorge rest stop.

The discovery of eyeballs in the tank of a public toilet can sure kick-start a thriller. Archie isn’t certain that Gretchen is the killer they’re searching for, but there is no doubt that he not only wants to catch the murderer who separated those eyeballs from their owners, but also Gretchen – and this time he wants Gretchen dead.

Archie teams up this time as much with Susan Ward, a journalist who wants the crime beat at the local paper, as he does with his long-suffering partner. Susan finds herself with more scoops than she can handle, and more physical danger than she had really imagined was possible for a scribbler. Her hair is purple this time around, but that doesn’t detract from her competence. It’s been fun to watch her grow over the course of three books, and now she is truly a force to be reckoned with.

As is my habit when I write about thrillers in this space, I’ll stop short of giving you any more information for fear of spoiling all the nice traps Cain lays for her readers. I will say only that I thought this a better book than Heartsick, with a more realistic denouement. Evil at Heart is a great thriller.

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.

Heartsick
Chelsea Cain
St. Martin’s Minotaur
U.S. hardcover, 1st ed.
ISBN 0-312-36846-1
336 pages; $23.95

There came a moment while reading Heartsick when I knew, I absolutely knew who had done it. There was no doubt in my mind. My heart sank, not only because I liked this particular character, but also because I’d figured it out too early in the book. This happens to me a lot, because I read a lot of mysteries, and it’s the rare author who can keep me guessing until the end. And I’ve never been wrong when I get one of these convictions.

Until now. Chelsea Cain is one clever lady. Even though the right answer is obvious in retrospect – as it should be in any mystery that plays fair – the solution eluded me with its many red herrings. This solid first effort, though clumsily written in spots, reveals an extremely promising talent, and I’m hoping we’ll be hearing a lot more from Ms. Cain.

Her tale involves the ghastliest criminal since Thomas Harris wrote The Silence of the Lambs, a woman named Gretchen Lowell, who claims to be responsible for at least 200 deaths. She is now safely locked up, but she still manages to control Portland Detective Archie Sheridan, who was in charge of the investigation to capture her for ten long years. Just before she was caught – she actually turned herself in – she spent many long days leisurely torturing Sheridan both mentally and physically, until he became hers in heart, mind and body. He still visits her every Sunday, ostensibly to get from her the names and locations of her kills, but really because he can’t help himself; he must see her.

Now a new serial murderer is loose in Portland, taking young teenage girls, killing and raping them. The old task force formed to catch Gretchen is reunited to catch this new murderer as quickly as possible, before the body count mounts. Sheridan’s work is either complicated or helped (it isn’t entirely clear which) by the constant shadow of Susan Ward, a young newspaper reporter who hopes to earn a Pulitzer with a series of articles about him. Ward is simultaneously likeable and unlikeable, an apparent case of arrested development who still favors torn jeans and pink hair despite her unquestioned talent as a mature writer. Her involvement with Sheridan becomes more complicated than either of them expected, and one soon begins to wonder who needs who the most.

Heartsick suffers from a number of the problems one expects in first mysteries: a few characters who are too obviously stereotypes, like the mayor who can’t wait to give the press conference announcing the identity of the murderer, or the partner who does things against his better judgment because he trusts and is protective of Sheridan. But Gretchen Lowell is a wonderful invention, on a par with but not derivative of Hannibal Lecter. I want to know more about what makes this woman tick. I hope that Cain has more books planned around her horrific misdeeds, because I can’t wait to read them.