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Oh, no, not another serial killer! And a serial killer who's personally battling the police detective assigned to the case! And a serial killer who sends gruesome little threats to our protagonist, the police detective assigned to the case! I am really tired of reading about monsters who carve up women to add excitement to their pathetic little lives, and I am really glad that these creeps are much rarer in real life than they are in crime fiction. Fortunately, however, dear reader, if you can tolerate just one more serial killer, this is a terrific book and the first in a promising new series. (No pun intended.) Our protagonist is Chicago Police Lieutenant Jacqueline Daniels, aka Jack Daniels. As the curtain rises, her live-in lover has just departed forever (which doesn't bother her until she notices the toothbrush he left behind in the bathroom), she hasn't gotten a good night's sleep since the first Reagan administration, and now the mutilated body of a young woman has been found in a convenience store dumpster, and it's Jack's job to arrest the Gingerbread Man, who leaves behind Christmas tree ornament cookies as his calling card. As she attempts to stop him, he takes her efforts personally and attempts, in turn, to stop her by, for example, leaving her a bag of candy studded with sharps. Also hindering her efforts are some FBI profilers helping her on the case with increasingly odd suggestions about the type of person she should be looking for, but her fellow police officers are overall sympathetic and competent characters. What makes the next mixed drink in this series worth waiting for is Jack herself and her sometimes straight-on, sometimes awry take on life and the world. It must be true, as she says, that when police officers encounter a vaguely familiar face, it's unlikely to be, as it is for most of the rest of us, somebody we knew in high school, and it's likely to be, instead, someone they've arrested. Jack takes it all in stride, enlists in a dating service, and gets shot. I do want to read what she's doing next, especially if it doesn't involve any serial killers.
Reviewed by Joy Matkowski Perry, June 2004
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