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CRUEL SEASON FOR DYING, A
by Harker Moore
Mysterious Press, July 2003
307 pages
$24.95
ISBN: 0892967749


Buy in the UK | Buy in Canada

A CRUEL SEASON FOR DYING centers around NYPD detective James Sakura. He is Japanese-American and married to a Japanese blind sculptress. A serial killer is targeting gay men and is turning them into angels. After a somewhat painless death (a drug is given to stop the heart), the killer inserts white wings in the shoulder blades. After arranging the body demurely, the killer writes the name of a fallen angel on the wall. This type of crime scene appears several times and gets the city in an uproar. Is this a gay killer or does the rest of the population need to live in fear as well? The leaks inside the police department itself only make the situation tenser.

Sakura calls in FBI profiler, Willie French, for her assistance. She helped train him when he spent time at the academy so he feels he can trust her assessments. He also turns to his former partner, Michael Darius, who left the department under suspicious circumstances; however, Darius was one of the best. Sakura and his team must solve the riddle of this killer and his true purpose before more lives are lost.

A CRUEL SEASON FOR DYING falls flat. The book moves along at a face pace but then unexpectedly it falls into the trap that many books fall into – predictable plot elements. Unfortunately, there are more of these plot elements than one can count but several are memorable. For example - the detective who does not quite fit into the department (or American culture) ends up having martial problems as the case dogs him. In addition, it is obvious who the killer is once he interacts with the other characters. Being able to guess the murderer half way through the book is no fun, especially when the police are still hunting around for him. These plot elements, in addition to those not mentioned, ruined the drive of the book.

Reviewed by Sarah Dudley, August 2003

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Contact: Yvonne Klein (ymk@reviewingtheevidence.com)


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