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Type of bind: Mass Market Paperback
Dewey Decimal Number: 813.54
EAN num: 9780451201553
ISBN number: 0451201558
Label: Signet
Manufacturer: Signet
Quantity: 1
Page Count: 432
Printing Date: February 01, 2001
Publishing house: Signet
Release Date: February 06, 2001
Sale Popularity Level: 84631
Studio: Signet
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Editor's Notes and Comments:
Product Description:
In this classic, early novel from the popular Alan Gregory series, a cold case gets hot as the crime-solving psychologist investigates a decade-old double homicide that will threaten the guilty-and endanger the innocent.
User popularity level:
Rated by buyers -
I just don't know about this book. I was excited about the subject and thought the concept was great. I found the thought of Dr. Gregory working for an organization that donates its time to solve cold cases to be fascinating. The very first part of the book is regular Stephen White with all his facts, his twists and turns and getting to know the main characters. However, the back end of the book is what got me. It was like he had led you to a point where the deaths could be solved and the murderer or murderers could be 2 or 3 people. Then Mr. White sat down and said to himself, well let's make it someone else, but have all those others involved too. It was weird. I agree with some of the other reviews I've read about this book. It was implausible that Dr. Gregory even makes it out of this book alive after the situations he's painted in, but it's fiction so oh well. I found this book very interesting and easy to read and get into, but I also found the end of it maddening. I recommend it to readers of the Dr. Gregory series and to anyone looking for a good book just beware of the back third of the book.
Rated by buyers 
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In this 8th addition to the series, Dr. Alan Gregory and his pregnant wife, Lauren Crowder are asked to offer their services to a volunteer based law enforcement agency by the name of Locard. The agency members have voted in agreement to take on their subsequent assignment - to solve a mystery that is about a dozen years cold. It was 1988 when two high school friends, Tami and Miko were murdered. With Lauren's legal input and Alan's expertise as a clinical psychologist, the group of mixed professionals enthusiastically start their investigation.
This was neither my favorite nor least favorite book of the series so far. While it kept my interest, it lacked some of the energy and charm that I found with previous installments. We didn't get to see Alan at work in his downtown office and I actually missed the interaction between Dr. Gregory and his patients.
I do have to say this...for such a wimpy hero, Alan sure does find himself in a mountain of danger and often. He constantly worries about getting into trouble with his wife, he cannot stomach blood and guts, and when dire circumstances require that he handle a gun, he needs help turning the safety off! Nevertheless, for such a wimpy hero, he sure is lovable.
Rated by buyers -
In this, the eighth Alan Gregory thriller, the Colorado-based clinical psychologist and his wife, Boulder Assistant District Attorney Lauren Crowder, are asked to assist a private organization known as Locard. Comprised of former and current prosecutors, federal law enforcement agents, and forensic specialists, the group (named after the legendary 19th-century French detective Edmond Locard) specializes in providing assistance to local police in solving "cold cases," i. e., unsolved cases that have been open for an especially long time.
In this instance, Locard is investigating the murder of teenagers Tamara Franklin and Mariko Hamamoto, two close friends who disappeared from their homes in Steamboat Springs, Colorado, one cold November evening in 1988. The girls' bodies were discovered a few months later when the springtime thaw melted the snowbank in which their killer had hidden their corpses. Because the bodies had been mutilated (Tami's body was found sans a hand, Mariko's was missing the toes of one foot), local police sought an opportunistic killer, either a serial killer or a drifter, an approach that proved unsuccessful.
Asked to perform a "psychological autopsy," Gregory conducts interviews with several people connected to the case, including the girls' parents, siblings, and friends. His inquiries also bring him into contact with Mariko's psychologist, Dr. Raymond Welle. Welle has also known tragedy: Four years after the girls' disappearance, Welle's wife Gloria was apparently murdered by another of his patients, the severely depressed Brian Sample. The crime drew national headlines and propelled Welle into the public eye, very first gaining him a syndicated talk show, then a Senate seat. Suspecting that Welle knows more about the case than he lets on, Gregory doggedly pursues the Senator.
Gregory's odyssey into the past affects him in varying ways. Of course, there's the thrill of the hunt, the intellectual challenge, and the satisfaction of bringing a criminal to justice. But that's not all, as Gregory becomes involved on a very personal level. His many interviews bring home a hard fact to the psychologist, namely that human beings inflict great damage on each other every day. He's reminded that murder has a ripple effect, irrevocably changing the lives of both survivors and victims. Gregory's personal life is also impacted by the investigation, as he becomes the target of forces anxious to conceal the truth. Touchingly, his thoughts in moments of peril always turn to his pregnant wife, and how he now has even more to live for than before.
If you had to choose one word to describe this novel, that word would probably be "intimate," in the sense that the reader's involvement in the narrative increases as Gregory digs deeper in his search for the truth. Of course, White pays a lot of attention to Gregory and Lauren Crowder; after eight novels, they feel like old friends. But White also lavishes a great deal of attention on the rest of his cast -- supporting characters are given sufficient substance to keep them interesting, from Kimber Lister, the somewhat pompous, agoraphobic leader of Locard, to family friend A. J. Simes, a retired FBI psychologist who, like Crowder, suffers from multiple sclerosis.
That's not to say that everything's perfect, however. For instance, the answer to the riddle Gregory faces is so complex that, once the perpetrators are revealed, it takes page upon page of exposition to explain their actions and motivations, causing one to wonder why they don't just shoot Gregory and be done with it. This is only a minor criticism, however, rendered inconsequential by the air of intimacy and immediacy White creates.
Rated by buyers 
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I appreciate good writing, I really do. This novel delivers that; White brings the characters alive quite well and weaves a good narrative that ties them all together naturally with very believable encounters. The trouble is, there's nothing interesting about them. It's a dull story, and that's really disappointing. I don't think I'm going to give up on White as an author, maybe I just chose the book to get acquainted with him.
Rated by buyers -
The plot is good, the characters do act reasonably enough, there is some thrill, the location is well described, what else one would ask for?
And I liked the part where a pacticing clinical psychologist married to an ADA thinks that somebody else but not him is rich (in political sense).
It is too graphic for my modest tastes, though.
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