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Alex Delillo, a Pasadena cop, receives a shock when she learns she has a half-brother. However, there will be no joyous reunion for her and Thomas Manning. Manning is dead, of an apparent suicide. Alex doesn't believe it was suicide, because he had attempted to reach her and give her some important information just before he died. She was certain that if he was going to kill himself he would not have reached out to a sister he didn't know. At first it is hard to believe that they are related, but events will prove to her that he and she shared the same father. Alex barely knew her father, who left her and her mother when she was five years old. He had been a bit player in movies, and she occasionally saw him in one of his three movies when they showed up on late night television. None of the productions were successful, and although his parts were brief, he was a very good actor and those were the only memories she had of him. As she and her partner attempt to discover more about her brother, Alex learns that her father had been questioned 18 years previously as a suspect in a murder investigation. She talks to a retired police officer who tells her that he had suspected him of three murders which had occurred in an area of Los Angeles near the concrete riverbed of the LA River. It is strongly suggested to her from several sources in the LAPD that she should forget the past, accept that her brother had killed himself and get on with her life and her job. The author, a screenwriter in Los Angeles, introduced Alex in a previous book RUN THE RISK. She is a single mom whose daughter has just moved out to attend college. Alex and Harrison, her partner, are entirely believable police officers. All of the characters in the book are well drawn and credible. There is much suspense and tension created by the backstory of a fire that is consuming parts of LA County, which is symbolic of the tearing apart of the memories that Alex had of her father and her childhood. Yet she is a strong and determined woman who has finally come to grips with the secrets of her childhood. At the end of the book she is a woman with a steely determination who has a new focus to her life.
Reviewed by Lorraine Gelly, July 2006
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Contact: Yvonne Klein (ymk@reviewingtheevidence.com)
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