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DEAD FAMOUS
by Carol O'Connell
Putnam, September 2003
288 pages
$24.95
ISBN: 0399150846


Buy in the UK | Buy in Canada

Johanna Apollo, a hunchback with the legs of a dancer, works for Ned's Crime Scene Cleaners, now being managed by NYPD Det Sgt Riker, who is on medical leave, recovering from having been shot four times. Kathy Mallory, NYPD's rogue cop, is watching Apollo, while she watches over her partner, Riker.

Riker is in a bad way. He is still in shock from the shooting. Mallory had him moved to an apartment in Charles Butler's building in Manhattan, while Riker was recovering in hospital. In her own way, Kathy Mallory is taking care of her adoptive father's ex-partner. Riker drinks himself into oblivion every night. He never opens his mail. He is breaking NYPD rules by overseeing his brother's business while on medical leave, but Riker doesn't care.

Ian Zachary, a shock jock who insults his listeners, exhorts his listeners to find the members of a jury who found a guilty man innocent in Chicago. Nine of the jurors have been found and murdered. Where are the others?

A particularly obnoxious Fed from the Chicago office, Marvin Argus, is also looking for the murderer of Timothy Kidd, an FBI agent who had been killed in a psychiatrist's waiting room in Chicago. He's in NY, trying to take over from the NY bureau, and they don't appreciate that.

This is a very atypical Mallory book. She remains in the background, for the most part, trying to get her partner back into the land of the living and actively back into the department. She's as abrasive as ever, but the very fact that she is trying to help another human being shows how she has changed over the course of the seven books featuring Kathy Mallory, the ex-New York street kid who was adopted by a cop and his wife, and became a member of the force herself.

This is Riker's book. We even find out his first name. And, even though we see less of Mallory than usual, it is also Mallory's book. Her discoveries about her parents have started to crack the shell she has built around herself. She knows she is the only one to be able to bring Riker back, and she does what she has to. He is the last link to her adoptive father. She can't lose that.

DEAD FAMOUS can be read as a stand-alone novel, but much of the subtlety will be lost if you do. Mallory is the person you would want on your side if trouble comes. She may appear to be the ultimate loner, but she is always seeking justice for someone weaker than herself.

Reviewed by Barbara Franchi, December 2003

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