BLOOD MEMORY by Greg Iles
Greg Iles has managed to create a creepy southern gothic mystery that can not be put down. His latest novel BLOOD MEMORY is his best work of fiction yet and should be gobbled up by Hollywood immediately. (Angelina Jolie, are you listening?) With touches of Tennessee Williams and William Faulkner, Iles drags us headlong through a story that encompasses rape, incest, adultery and bi-polar disorders. Is that the kitchen sink? - well throw it in too.
Catherine Ferry works with the police department in New Orleans. She is a forensic odontologist but gets called on to help mainly because she is having an affair with police lieutenant Sean Regan. He has used her on cases before and she lets him use her expertise to solve crimes and then take credit for what she did. The fact she has discovered she is pregnant might put a crimp in their relationship.
But Catherine has other problems. Her father died when she was eight and she didn't speak for a year after his death. He was supposedly killed by a prowler, but now Catherine has reason to believe that story may not be true. There is a serial killer on the loose in New Orleans and the death of a list of men has triggered something in Catherine's subconscious.
As Catherine fights to remember the past, deal with her pregnancy and Sean, plus get the truth about her father's death from her family; someone decides she needs to die. It all boils down to a fight to the finish between Catherine and the person she thinks she can trust the most.
Iles knows how to write a mystery, and he knows how to keep it sophisticated and believable. Catherine Ferry is one of the best characters he has ever created and one that deserves to be brought back for more adventures in future novels.
If you like a solid mystery, good intriguing characters, and a setting that is as much a part of the plot as the characters; then by all means get BLOOD MEMORY and read it from cover to cover as quickly as you can. This is intelligent, interesting writing by one of today's best novelists.
BLOOD MEMORY is published by Scribner's. It contains 496 pages and sells for $24.95.