Judas Child - Softcover

O'Connell, Carol

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0099244527 ISBN 13: 9780099244523

Publisher: Arrow, 1999

Synopsis

Sadie Green's purple bicycle was found abandoned at the bus stop. Then her friend, Gwen, disappeared, which led the police to propose a runaway theory to the press. But State Police Investigator Rouge Kendall wasn't convinced. On a barstool in Dame's tavern, where Kendall spent a little too much time, he remembered his own mother, begging for the life of his twin sister, Susan. That was fifteen years ago. And a man had been imprisioned for that murder - a priest, barely in his twenties. Father Paul Marie continued to proclaim hi innocence. And current events might prove that he was telling the truth, that someone else might be responsible for all three crimes. . . Taut, menacing, intensely felt, Carol O'Connell's fifth novel reveals a total mastery of her craft.

About this title

Review:

Everyone knows that they caught the local child killer, and that formerly popular local priest Father Paul Marie is doing hard time. Everyone is so sure that, when 15 years later two little girls disappear, the police are sure that they have run away and will turn up soon. Everyone, that is, except for state police investigator Rouge, whose sister was the victim 15 years ago, and scarred beautiful criminologist Ali, who believes Father Paul Marie's claims of innocence. They have their own problems--why is his family broke, and what caused her scar? Things are not going as well as they might for the killer either; this particular pair of children have resources of pluck and ingenuity that constantly baffle him.

This is a departure for O'Connell; she has abandoned her usual detective, high-tech psychopath Mallory and her crew of misfits, for people less obviously extraordinary and brings the same skewed intelligent vision of human capability to bear on them. The switches between investigators trying to unravel past and present, and victims surviving against the odds, successfully wind up the tension to an almost unendurable pitch; O'Connell turns in a virtuoso combination of detection and suspense that is her best book yet. --Roz Kaveney

Review:

"Few readers will be able to resist the charms of her lyrical prose or her daringly original plot, and anyone unmoved by the soul-shattering climax should give up reading fiction altogether." (Booklist)

"A heart-stopping, twist-in-the-tail novel of intelligence and suspense. True thrills don't come cheap, but they sometimes come as well-written and mesmerising as this." (Frances Fyfield, Mail on Sunday)

"Scarily good" (Richard North Patterson)

"A menacing and unsettling thriller set against a mysterious winter landscape that reflects the cold heart of a serial killer . . . O'Connell is a consummate story teller . . . a unique talent who deserves to be a household name. Judas Child is a scary monster of a book that should make her just that." (Val McDermid, Express)

"Compulsive reading, a genuine page-turner, in which the "whodunnit" is only part of the puzzle" (Peter Millar The Times)

About this edition

• Publisher: Arrow
• Publication date: 1999
• ISBN 10: 0099244527
• ISBN 13: 9780099244523
• Binding: Paperback
• Number of pages: 416