Find Me, Carol O'Connell
Hardcover: 352 pages
Publisher: Putnam Adult (December 28, 2006)
Genre: Mystery
Rating: 4 1/2 stars
This last in the Kathleen Mallory series by Carol O'Connell gets 4 1/2 (out of 5) stars. It's an excellently woven story that keeps you engaged and on your toes the entire time. O'Connell is an expert at creating minor characters that are so interesting, rich, and flawed that you become keenly aware of your own humanity when you want to champion them or knee them in the groin. Like O'Connell's fourth book, Stone Angel, this story is a foray into Mallory's past. Here we are given, piece by piece, more information on how this intelligent but broken, sociopath-turned-cop came into being, although some questions, rightly so, remain unanswered. We get to see glimpses of Mallory's humanity as she struggles to hold herself together while retracing letters from her long lost father, as he retraced a Route 66 that exists only as a ghost 25 years later. At the same time, Mallory is also tracking a serial killer who buried his victims along the same highway. Up until the very end, we're left wondering if this Route 66 serial killer is the same person who wrote those long lost letters, and if so, will Mallory destroy the writer of those letters... her father. It's a delicious book, one that should be savored, not rushed through.
If you've not read any books in the series, start with Mallory's Oracle (Putnam, 1994), and work your way up. If you're not quite up to reading a series right now, O'Connell has two superb stand-alone novels, Judas Child (Putnam, 1998) and Bone by Bone (Putnam, 2008). Both equally good reads.
Amazon readers gave it 4 out of 5 stars
Goodreads readers gave it 4 out of 5 stars
I give it 4 1/2 out of 5 stars
Labels: book review, Carol O'Connell, Find Me, Mallory, mystery