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Type of bind: Paperback
Dewey Decimal Number: 813
EAN num: 9780340829400
ISBN number: 0340829400
Label: Hodder & Stoughton
Manufacturer: Hodder & Stoughton
Quantity: 1
Page Count: 448
Printing Date: September 01, 2005
Publishing house: Hodder & Stoughton
Sale Popularity Level: 532512
Studio: Hodder & Stoughton
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School’s out—forever…class reunions can be a killer.
Something, or someone, is eliminating Evan Delaney’s graduating class. For Evan, China Lake was a tough place to grow up. But she didn’t realize just how tough until, returning to the desert military base for her high school reunion, she discovers that a disturbing number of her classmates have died young. And on the night of the reunion, another one is savagely butchered. She’s just the first. There’s a serial killer on the loose. One with a major axe to grind with China Lake’s high school graduates… Meg Gardiner was raised in California and graduated from Stanford Law School; she practiced law in Los Angeles and taught in the Writing Program at the University of California, Santa Barbara.
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Rated by buyers -
In high school, Evan Delaney and her class go on a field trip to the Naval Base in China Lake to do some sketches of drawings on a canyon. Evan and three other girls slip away and go where a project is being blown up, which they witness. Various Federal agents interview the four high school females, but eventually they return to school. Evan goes on with her life assuming the incident was nothing.
Evan accompanied by her lover Jesse attends her high school class' fifteenth year anniversary gala. Those who died are commemorated, but no one notices that the people who died are way higher than average in this grouping. Someone killed one of the high school witnesses before the reunion and a second one just after the event. Evan soon learns that a grey ops experiment being blown up was what they actually observed fifteen years ago. Now anyone remotely associated with Project South Star is being killed; Evan will not sit idly by waiting her turn.
This is the fourth Meg Gardiner thriller I read and as with the others this super author hooks the reader with plenty of action and a heroine who is a woman in peril, but takes care of herself although that drives the men in her life crazy especially Jesse who loves her. The story line is fast-paced and a bit over the Sierras, but fun to read as Jessie will do anything to keep his beloved Evan safe even when she, in his mind, foolishly risks her life to stop the Captain America replica.
Harriet Klausner
Rated by buyers -
I picked this book up after reading Stephen King's extreme recommendation. I should have known that the master of horror would love a book that is VERY intense! I hadn't read any books by this author before, and I was really impressed with her writing. I wasn't prepared for the extreme violence though, as this serial killer/torturer brutalizes protagonist Evan Delaney's high school classmates. Delaney becomes aware of the killings at her 15-year reunion. At very first no one credits the killings as purposeful, since all the victims seem to have died in different, if bizarre, ways -- but there are way too many of them, and eventually Delaney begins to see a pattern ....
The book starts with a torture-murder, there are many cruel murders in the course of the novel, and there is even the murder of a child. I think the author is a fine writer, the mystery is thrilling and the characters are interesting and three-dimensional. The final scene is terrific. That's why I give this book 5 stars. HOWEVER, the cruelty and intensity of the killing means I probably won't buy another in the series. Fair warning, but if the brutality doesn't bother you too much, I would highly recommend them.
Rated by buyers -
I LOVED this book. I read China Lake very first and enjoyed it, but this one really blew me away. I couldn't put it down. Highly recommended.
Rated by buyers 
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If Patterson can sell millions, Gardiner should also. She's better. Put your mind on cruise. Enjoy the asides and settle in for the ride.
Rated by buyers -
Meg Gardiner is good. In fact she is really, really good is you like the high-octane thriller genre (mystery does not really describe these novels). There was a point in "Crosscut," the fourth of her Evan Delaney where I thought I was successfully ahead of the game and knew that what was going on was not "A" but "B." Only it turned out to "C," which was so much worse than "A" and "B" put together. I should know by now that when we get to the part of Gardiner's novels where things go from bad to worse that we are only just getting started. Halfway through reading "Crosscut" I was thinking how Evan Delaney takes a licking but keeps on ticking; then I discovered that her level of determination was nothing compared to the villain this time around, especially when you get to the endgame and Gardiner puts the pedal to the metal and floors it for the final chapters. Plus, Gardiner has endowed her heroine with a wicked sense of humour that always has me chuckling (even more so than the "Ask Evan" part of her website).
In the previous book, "Jericho Point," Gardiner had upped the ante because the third time around Evan was the target after having dealt with threats to her brother and nephew ("China Lake") and her boyfriend Jesse ("Mission Canyon"). So I assumed Gardiner would not be able to continue her escalation, but I was wrong because this time Evan discovers that something, or someone, is killing off her high school graduating class. More specifically, the targets were all part of a particular field trip at China Lake and Evan is part of a quartet who are being saved for last, which is not even close to being a good thing. That is actually more than what you need to know about the novel, because all that really matters is that if you have read the previous novels this one is every bit as good, and arguably better, and you should discover what this one is about without bothering to read the back cover for hints. Certainly "Crosscut" is a much darker tale as Gardiner crafts scenes and situations that have horrific implications for her cast of characters. On the other hand, if you have not read any of Gardiner's books, then the effort here would simply be to persuaded you to track down "China Lake" and start at the very beginning of the Evan Delaney series.
The fifth Evan Delaney thriller, "Kill Chain," comes out in paperback in June and mine is already ordered from the UK branch of Amazon (because I did not think to look north of the border when I took Stephen King's advice and tracked down these novels). I assume the sixth one will show up sometime later this year and you can bet your sweet bippy that I am going to order the hardcover edition and not wait a year or however long it takes for it to come out in paperback. More importantly, I am going to enjoy the ride for as long as it lasts and not let the shadow of what happened with the novels of Laurell K. Hamilton, Tom Clancy, Patricia Cornwell, and other former favorites pass over my happy reader's heart.
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