Die With Me
A
Mark Tartaglia Mystery
Elena
Forbes
MacAdam Cage (Trade Paperback)
ISBN-10: 1-59692-308-3 (1596923083)
ISBN-13: 978-1-59692-308-9 (9781596923089)
Publication Date: July 2008
List Price: $14.00
Synopsis (from
the publisher): When fourteen-year-old Gemma Kramer’s broken
body
is found on the floor of St. Sebastian’s Church, the official
ruling is that she jumped to her death from the organ gallery above the
altar. But then a witness comes forward claiming to have seen Gemma
kissing a much older man before the two disappeared into the church
together. And when the toxicology report reveals traces of GHB and
alcohol in her system, a full-scale murder investigation is launched.
At the helm is Detective Inspector Mark Tartaglia, a stubborn cop known
for following his hunches. It’s Tartaglia’s first
time in
charge, and he walks right into a political minefield as the
investigation turns up three more suspicious deaths — all
involving vulnerable young women falling to their deaths, all initially
ruled suicides.
In the whirlwind of conflicting theories from the media, criminal
profilers, and cautious administrators, Tartaglia and his detectives
must connect the dots between victims to find a serial killer with a
chilling predilection for lonely girls and deadly heights.
Review:
There’s a serial-killer pattern to the three female teenaged
murders staged as suicides in London’s affluent Ealing
district.
But are other murders linked as well? DI Mark Tartaglia and his female
sidekick, DS Sam Donovan, of Elena Forbes’ riveting debut
novel, Die With Me,
think so. But now they’ve got to prove the connections
despite a
scarcity of clues and witnesses, obstruction from their superior
officers, untimely leaks to the press and deliberate interference from
a Behavioural Investigative Analyst with behavioural quirks of his own.
A riveting British police procedural that reads like a blend of the
best of America’s Law
and Order (any series you want), Criminal Minds and CSI (again, any
version), Forbes’ Die
With Me is an explosive start for the Mark Tartaglia
series.
Forbes’ novel is an intricate mesh of plots and sub-plots and
of
modern and traditional investigative techniques. There is the main
storyline, of course, that involves the serial killer murders of the
three young girls, all found as apparent suicides in a “Die
with
me” pact in churches, all posed as brides, all drugged, and
all
with missing locks of hair. Then there are the “alike but
different” murders of some other older women that set
Tartaglia
and Donovan and their team members searching for similarities to the
press-dubbed “Bridegroom” murders. In telling the
stories,
Forbes recounts revealing episodes about the killer, describing the
chilling details of his upbringing, the reasons for his psychological
aberrations, even, the revenge he has taken on his family members
before embarking on his murderous trail. It’s an alarming
in-depth and realistic look into the crazed mind of a murderer,
complete with his hatred for women, his accompanying vile language and
hallucinatory visits from his murdered grandparents. More fearful still
is his success in luring his vulnerable victims in person, by telephone
or by emails even as the reader, anticipating what is to come, wants to
shout out to them, “Watch out! He’s dangerous.
Don’t
get involved.” An episode of a potential victim’s
escape,
tragic assault by others and her re-capture and killing by the murderer
is compellingly horrific, and a roller coaster ride of the
reader’s emotions.
Besides the storyline suspense of ultimately finding and capturing the
killer before he executes his next victim, there’s the
tension
between characters created when Tartaglia is reassigned to report to a
female supervisor with polar opposite views to his about the developing
science of Behavioural Investigative Analysis. For him it’s
pseudo-science but she’s in favour, so she hires a consultant
with whom she’s had an earlier fling and Tartaglia has had a
previous run in. Flings are nothing new, though, since Tartaglia has
one of his own going with the local forensic pathologist who
isn’t completely honest with him about another relationship
she’s having. Then, his newly-appointed boss becomes an email
and
telephone target of the killer. Or could it be someone else? And to add
to the mystery of the events Tartaglia discovers that the BIA
consultant needs to come clean about what he’s been up to
late at
night in a neighbourhood backyard. Donovan, too, has secrets about her
feelings for her boss, and when she decides to look elsewhere for
romance, it’s a search she quickly comes to regret.
Tartaglia’s got regrets as well, with some more serious than
others, but with all of them coupled to the surprise ending to the
story and opening the door for the next case in Forbes’ soon
to
be released Our Lady of
Pain, to be reviewed here in coming weeks.
Special thanks to M. Wayne Cunningham (mw_cunningham@telus.net) for contributing his review of Die With Me.
Review
Copyright © 2008 — M. Wayne Cunningham
— All
Rights Reserved
Reprinted with Permission
Mysteries in this series ...
Die With Me
MacAdam Cage (Hardcover), October 2007
ISBN-10: 1-59692-277-X (159692277X)
ISBN-13: 978-1-59692-277-8 (9781596922778)
Our
Lady of Pain
MacAdam Cage (Hardcover), November 2008
ISBN-10: 1-59692-316-4 (1596923164)
ISBN-13: 978-1-59692-316-4 (9781596923164)
Omnimystery keywords for Die With Me ...
Location(s) referenced: London, England.
