CHASING THE NIGHT by Iris Johansen
Iris Johansen has written a large number of books concerning the adventures of Eve Duncan. She and her partner Joe Quinn are always involved in something interesting be it a kidnapping case, a political plot, or a combination of many crimes. Joe works for the FBI and Eve is an expert in facial reconstruction of skulls. Together they make quite a team and in Johansen’s new novel CHASING THE NIGHT they take on one of their most exciting cases yet.
The case comes to them in the person of Catherine Ling. She has been working with the CIA but now she needs to go out on her own in order to try to get her son back. He was taken from her when he was two years old by a renegade Russian criminal named Rakovac. Rakovac has held him for nine years and Catherine has been powerless to get him back.
She now comes to Eve to ask her to do an age progression on a picture of her son so that she will be able to recognize him if she gets close to him in Russia. She feels Rakovac has reached the point where he no longer needs to keep Luke, her son, alive. The CIA won’t help her in any meaningful way so she intends to go to Russia and attempt to steal Luke back. It is a desperate plan but one she will do or die.
Johansen has written many stories similar to this one in the past but somehow this new novel gives it some type of added twist which makes it all seem fresh and new. Maybe the difference is in having Catherine be the one searching for a lost child rather than Eve.
In previous novels Eve has been obsessed with trying to find the body of her daughter Bonnie or better yet somehow finding her alive. Bonnie was abducted and apparently murdered when she was eight years old but her body has never been found. Eve knows in her heart Bonnie is dead but she has never given up on finding her body and the identity of the person who killed her.
Johansen writes with compassion in her words. She seems to have a certain empathy for these women who have lost children and are continually searching. This is what draws Eve to Catherine and Johansen’s writing style makes us understand it from the start. This is the core and heart of the book and the reason it is so fascinating. The reader wants to find and rescue Luke just as much as Catherine does.
There are thousands of novels that come out each year and tell the stories of people in dire circumstances, but this story by Johansen jumps out of the crowd. It is a story that seizes the reader’s attention and draws it into this race against time. Eve and Catherine are a formidable team and they are supplemented by Joe and his skills. This means Rakovac is in for a tough time and that makes for the fun of the story.
If you are looking for a grand adventure that will stir your spirit then you need to read CHASING THE NIGHT. It is Johansen at her best and all of her many fans know that when she is good she is very, very good and when she’s at her best she’s in a class of her own.
CHASING THE NIGHT is published by St Martin’s Press. It contains 362 pages and sells for $27.99.