THE BLUE HOUR - Softcover

Parker

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0006513697 ISBN 13: 9780006513698

Publisher: HarperCollins, 2010

Synopsis

‘Parker has only one competitor – Thomas Harris’ Washington Post ... At once horrifying, tense and lyrical, The Blue Hour is a beautifully written novel that probes the darkest recesses of the human psyche.

He takes the women from shopping malls. They are beautiful, sophisticated, but he treats them like animals, and when he’s done he leaves only his grisly signature to taunt the Orange County police – a purse full of entrails. Where are the bodies? How can these women disappear so completely? Whatever the Purse Snatcher has done to them, it surely cannot be worse than the imaginings of a shock-hardened police force...but they don’t know the sick mind they’re dealing with.

Detective Hess has given his life to the police, but now lung cancer is looking to claim him. Merci Rayborn is at the beginning of her career and she’s determined to get to the top, whatever it takes. Assigned to the case by a boss with a hidden agenda, Hess and Merci at first agree on just one thing: they want to catch the Purse Snatcher and see him fry. But as another woman disappears, and then another, they become united through their obsession with a case that will change both their lives forever.

About this title

Product Description:

'Parker has only one competitor -- Thomas Harris' Washington Post ! At once horrifying, tense and lyrical, The Blue Hour is a beautifully written novel that probes the darkest recesses of the human psyche.

Review:

The Blue Hour, consolidates the achievement of Jefferson Parker's earlier work, while adding a finely honed, lyrical finish to his prose that places the novel as much in the literary field as in that of the psycho-thriller.

Tim Hess is an old-school, hard-nosed detective whose dedication is beginning to wane due a recent cancer diagnosis. Merci Rayborn, however, is at the start of her police career, with every intention of getting to the top--at any price. The ill-matched duo is assigned to track down a brutal serial killer who has been abducting women from shopping malls. All that is left after his horrific crimes is a gruesome signature: purses full of entrails.

But where are the bodies? As Hess and Rayborn track down the "Purse Snatcher," they find their boss seems to have a hidden agenda, which could be creating false leads and allowing a monster to commit more atrocities.

As his two protagonists close in, Parker is particularly adroit at revealing the growing obsession that unites them in their pursuit. In masterful fashion, he goes to the grimmest recesses of the human soul, while balancing this with the humanity and resilience of his principals. Although the book has all the mordant energy the genre demands, it is the carefully chosen, almost poetic prose that brilliantly set off the horrors and creates a highly unusual reading experience: "Terrible sights. Hess had learned to forgive himself for them. Sometimes it made him sad to know he was like this. It was part of what made him good at what he did...but he could never unimagine what he saw." --Barry Forshaw

About this edition

• Publisher: HarperCollins
• Publication date: 2010
• ISBN 10: 0006513697
• ISBN 13: 9780006513698
• Binding: Paperback
• Number of pages: 480