Chosen to Die
By Lisa Jackson
ISBN 978-1-4201-0277-2
Reviewed by Marlene Pyle
I am a long-time Lisa Jackson fan. However, I think I can do an unbiased review of her work, because I admit, I haven’t always loved everything she’s published. Some of her earlier books are historical romances and I had trouble slogging through them. I’m not much of a romance reader, though I’ll read almost anything else. I just don’t like that old Harlequin formula of girl meets boy, girl hates boy, girl changes her mind and they live happily ever after. There’s no mystery or suspense there because you can clearly see what’s coming from page one. I once took an online course in Romance writing, and the pros actually tell you to set the novel up that way. That’s too easy for me. I quickly got bored with writing Romance and I don’t fare much better with reading them.
But as long as Jackson sticks to crime thrillers, she’s in fine form. She frequently revisits characters from past novels. (My favorites are Detectives Rick Bentz and Reuben Montoya of New Orleans.) She has done that here as well, with female detectives Regan Pescoli and Selena Alvarez, who live in Montana.
The killer too, is recycled, but that’s one of the great things about Jackson’s novels—as in life, the loose ends are not always neatly tied up by the book’s conclusion. Sometimes the murderer gets away.
This killer operates in the dead of winter. He holds his victims hostage for days, then leaves them tied naked to trees in the middle of a vast and remote woods, to slowly freeze to death. He has killed this way before, but now it seems his victim is Detective Pescoli herself. Pescoli is a single mom with two teenagers, (one of whom is hell-bent on staying in trouble) and she has a stubborn streak as wide as the Big Sky country she lives in. Pescoli’s not going to go down easy, and her partner, Alvarez, isn’t about to give up on finding her before it’s too late.
Jackson is at her best in this genre and I look forward to the third and final book in this series, slated for release in July 2010.
Copyright ©2009 Marlene Pyle
DISCLOSURE OF MATERIAL CONNECTION
I have a material connection because I received a review copy that I can keep for consideration in preparing to write this content. I was not expected to return this item after my review.