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Hollywood homicide detective Petra Connor takes center stage in bestseller Kellerman's elaborate, suspenseful, albeit improbable, thriller. Connor, who assisted Kellerman's main series detective, psychologist Alex Delaware, in 2003's A Cold Heart, proves an engaging protagonist, fully capable of carrying a story on her own. She's investigating a seemingly random drive-by shooting that claimed four teenage victims when a precocious 22-year-old graduate student intern, Isaac Gomez, presents her with evidence that a serial killer has struck on the same day, June 28, every year for the past six years. Though his proof relies entirely on a statistical analysis he's performed, his unquestioned brilliance prompts Connor to do a little extracurricular digging that turns up suggestive clues supporting Gomez's theory. Meanwhile, after doggedly pursuing even the slightest lead in the drive-by shooting case, Connor suspects that one of the victims, perhaps the one who wasn't claimed by any next-of-kin, was deliberately targeted. While Connor finds the socially immature Gomez to be a challenging assistant, he displays considerable cool in the climactic showdown with the June 28 killer. Despite a last minute plot twist that comes out of left field, this is vintage Kellerman, sure to please his legions of fans. 內容簡介
Hollywood homicide detective Petra Connor has helped psychologist Alex Delaware crack tough cases in the past. And in Jonathan Kellerman's New York Times bestseller Billy Straight she took the lead in the desperate hunt for a teenage runaway stalked by a vengeful murderer. Now the complex and wryly compassionate Petra is once again at the center of the action, in a novel of cunning twists and page-turning suspense.
Lifeless bodies sprawl in a dance-club parking lot after a brutal L.A. drive-by. Of the four seemingly random victims, one stands out: a girl with pink shoes who cannot be identified–and who, days later, remains a Jane Doe. With zero leads and no apparent motive, it's another case destined for the cold file–until Petra decides to follow her instincts and descends into a world of traveling grifters and bloodthirsty killers, pursuing a possible eyewitness whose life is in mortal danger.
Finding her elusive quarry–alive–isn't all Petra has on her plate: departmental politics threatens to sabotage her case, and her personal life isn't doing much better. If all that wasn't enough, Isaac Gomez, a whiz-kid grad student researching homicide statistics at the station house, is convinced he's stumbled upon a bizarre connection between several unsolved murders. The victims had nothing in common, yet each died by the same method, on the same date–a date that's rapidly approaching again. And that leaves Petra with little time to unravel the twisted logic of a cunning predator who's evaded detection for years–and whose terrible hour is once more at hand.
"Why is it so hard to put down a Kellerman thriller?" asks Publishers Weekly. "It's simple: the nonstop action leaves you breathless; the plot twists keep you guessing; the themes...are provocative." Those in need of still further proof that "Kellerman has shaped the psychological mystery novel into an art form"(Los Angeles Times Book Review) need look no further than Twisted. 作者簡介
Jonathan Kellerman is one of the world's most popular authors. He has brought his expertise as a child psychologist to numerous bestselling tales of suspense (which have been translated into two dozen languages), including thirteen previous Alex Delaware novels; The Butcher's Theater, a story of serial killing in Jerusalem; and Billy Straight, featuring Hollywood homicide detective Petra Connor. He is also the author of numerous essays, short stories, and scientific articles, two children's books, and three volumes of psychology, including Savage Spawn: Reflections on Violent Children. He and his wife, the novelist Faye Kellerman, have four children. 精彩書評
Following her debut as Milo Sturgi's fellow officer in the Delaware/Sturgis mystery A Cold Heart (2003), L.A. Detective Petra Connor emerges on her own. Unfortunately, if Kellerman is testing the waters for a new series character, Petra, though tough enough and with the usual screwed-up love life, is nothing special. The best thing here is 22-year-old Isaac Gomez, a nerdy whiz kid who is investigating patterns in unsolved L.A. homicides for his doctoral dissertation. Although Petra is supposed to be working on the death of an unidentified teen in a drive-by shooting, when Isaac confronts her with several cold cases that have compelling links, she can't help but feel they deserve some attention, too. While Petra does most of the footwork, Isaac pulls up the background on his laptop and makes a few trips to the library, where an unusually randy librarian helps him out in both the physical and intellectual senses. The idea of a prodigy torn between his hardworking family and the excitement of police work is what supplies the energy here. Perhaps Kellerman should consider a series based on Isaac rather than Petra.
——Stephanie Zvirin
"Grabs the reader's attention and never lets go."
——Associated Press
"[Kellerman] keeps the creepiness coming until the big-twist finish."
——People
"Turn the page and you're hooked."
——The New York Times Book Review 精彩書摘
CHAPTER 1
May brought azure skies and California optimism to Hollywood. Petra Connor worked nights and slept through the blue. She had her own reason to be cheerful: solving two whodunit murders.
The first was a dead body at a wedding. The Ito-Park wedding, main ballroom of the Roosevelt Hotel, Japanese-American bride, Korean-American groom, a couple of law students who'd met at the U. Her father, a Glendale-born surgeon; his, an immigrant appliance dealer, barely able to speak English. Petra wondered about culture clash.
The body was one of the bride's cousins, a thirty-two-year-old CPA named Baldwin Yoshimura, found midway through the reception, in an unlocked stall of the hotel men's room, his neck twisted so hard, he looked like something out of The Exorcist. It took strong hands to do that, the coroner pronounced, but that was where the medical wisdom terminated.
Petra, working with no partner once again, talked to every friend and relative and finally unearthed the fact that Baldwin Yoshimura had been a serious lothario who'd made no distinction between married and unmarried conquests. As she continued to probe, she encountered nervous glances on the bride's side. Finally, a third cousin named Wendy Sakura blurted out the truth: Baldwin had been fooling with his brother Darwin's wife. The slut.
Darwin, a relative black sheep for this highly educated clan, was a martial arts instructor who worked at a studio in Woodland Hills. Petra forced herself to wake up during daylight, dropped in at the dojo, watched him put an advanced judo class through its paces. Stocky little guy, shaved head, pleasant demeanor. When the class was over, he approached Petra, arms extended for cuffing, saying, "I did it. Arrest me."
Back at the station, he refused a lawyer, couldn't wait to spill: Suspicious for some time, he'd followed his wife and his brother as they left the wedding and entered an unused banquet room. After passing behind a partition, said wife gave said sib enthusiastic head. Darwin allowed her to finish, waited until Baldwin went to the john, confronted his brother, did the deed.
"What about your wife?"said Petra.
"What about her?"
"You didn't hurt her."
"She's a woman,"said Darwin Yoshimura. "She's weak. Baldwin should've known better."
The second whodunit started off as bloodstains in Los Feliz and ended up with d.b. out in Angeles Crest National Forest. This victim was a grocer named Bedros Kashigian. The blood was found in the parking lot behind his market on Edgemont. Kashigian and his five-year-old Cadillac were missing.
Two days later, forest rangers found the Caddy pulled to the side of the road in the forest, Kashigian's body slumped behind the wheel. Dried blood had streamed out of his left ear, run onto his face and shirt, but no obvious wounds. Maggot analysis said he'd been dead the entire two days, or close to it. Meaning, instead of driving home from work, he'd made his way thirty miles east. Or had been taken there.
As far as Petra could tell, the grocer was a solid citizen, married, three kids, nice house, no outstanding debts. But a solid week of investigating Kashigian's activities gave rise to the fact that he'd been involved in a brawl two days before his disappearance.
Barroom melee at a place on Alvarado. Latino clientele, but Kashigian had a thing for one of the Salvadoran waitresses and went there frequently to nurse beer-and-shots before retiring to her room above the saloon. The fracas got going when two drunks started pounding each other. Kashigian got caught in the middle and ended up being punched in the head. Only once, according to the bartender. An errant bare fist and Kashigian had left the bar on his feet.
Kashigian's widow, dealing with her loss as well as the new insight that Bedros had been cheating on her, said hubby had complained of a headache, attributing it to banging his head against a bread rack. Couple of aspirins, he'd seemed fine.
Petra phoned the coroner, an unconscionably cheerful guy named Rosenberg, and asked if a single, bare-knuckle blow to the head could be fatal two days after the fact. Rosenberg said he doubted it.
A scan of Bedros Kashigian's insurance records showed hefty whole life and first-to-die policies as well as medical claims paid five years ago, when the grocer had been involved in a nine-car pileup on the 5 North that had shattered his skull and caused intracranial bleeding. Brought into the E.R. unconscious, Kashigian had been wheeled into surgery where a half-dollar-sized piece of skull had been sawed off so his brain could be cleaned up. That section, labeled a "roundel" by Rosenberg, had been reattached using sutures and screws.
After hearing about the accident, Rosenberg had changed his mind.
"The roundel was anchored by scar tissue,"he told Petra. "And the darn thing grew back thinner than the rest of the skull. Unfortunately for your guy, that's exactly where he took the punch. The rest of his head could have withstood the impact but the thin spot couldn't. It shattered, drove bone slivers into his brain, caused a slow bleed, and finally boom."
"Boom,"said Petra. "There you go again, blinding me with jargon."
The coroner laughed. Petra laughed. Neither of them wanting to think about Bedros Kashigian's monumental bad luck.
"A single punch,"she said.
"Boom,"said Rosenberg.
"Tell me this, Doctor R., could he have driven to the forest out of confusion?"
"Let me think about that. With shards of bone slicing into his gray matter, a slow bleed, yeah, he could've been hazy, disoriented."
Which didn't explain why Angeles Crest, specifically.
She asked Captain Schoelkopf if she should pursue homicide charges against the guy who'd landed the punch.
"Who is he?"
"Don't know yet."
"A bar fight."Schoelkopf flashed her the are-you-retarded? look. "Write it up as an accidental death."
Lacking the will—or the desire—to argue, she complied, then went to inform the widow. Who told her Angeles Crest was where she and Bedros used to go to make out when they were teenagers.
"At least he left me some good insurance," said the woman. "The main thing is my kids stay in private school."
Within days after closing both files, the loneliness set in. Petra had made the mistake of getting intimate with a partner, and now she was working and living solo.
The object of her affections was a strange, taciturn detective named Eric Stahl with a military background as an Army special services officer and a history that had unfurled slowly. The first time Petra had seen his black suit, pale skin, and flat, dark eyes she'd thought undertaker. She'd disliked him instinctively and the feeling appeared mutual. Somehow things had changed.
They'd started working together on the Cold Heart homicides, coordinating with Milo Sturgis in West L.A. to put away a scumbag psychopath who got off on dispatching creative types. Closing that one hadn't come easy; Eric had nearly died of stab wounds. Sitting, waiting, in the E.R. waiting room, Petra had met his parents, learned why he didn't talk or emote or act remotely human.
He'd once had a family—wife and two kids—but had lost everything. Heather, Danny, and Dawn. Taken from him cruelly. He'd resigned his military commission, spent a year doped up on antidepressants, then applied to the LAPD, where connections got him a Detective I appointment, Hollywood Division, where Schoelkopf had foisted him on Petra.
Whatever Schoelkopf knew he'd kept to himself. Uninformed, Petra tried to get along, but faced with a partner with all the warmth of ceramic tile, she soon gave up. The two of them ended up splitting chores, minimizing the time they spent together. Long, cold, silent stakeouts.
Then came a night full of terror. Even now, Petra wondered if Eric had been trying to commit Suicide by Perp. She'd never brought it up. Had no reason to.
She had not been the only woman in his life. During the Cold Heart investigation, he'd met an exotic dancer, a bubble-headed blonde with a perfect body named Kyra Montego aka Kathy Magary. Kyra was there in the waiting room, too, stuffed into too-small duds, sniffling into her hankie, examining her nails, unable to read the dumbest magazine out of anxiety or what Petra suspected was attention span disorder. Petra outlasted the bimbo, and when Eric woke up, it was her hand holding his, her eyes locking with his bruised, brown irises.
During the months of recuperation, Kyra kept dropping in at Eric's rented bungalow in Studio City, bearing takeout soup and plastic utensils. Offering plastic boobs and batting eyelashes and Lord knew what else.
Petra dealt with that by cooking for Eric. Growing up with five brothers and a widowed father in Arizona, she'd learned to be pretty handy around the kitchen. During the brief time her marriage lasted, she'd played at gourmet. Now a nighthawk divorcée, she rarely bothered to switch on the oven. But healing Eric with home-cooked goodies had seemed terribly urgent.
In the end, the bimbo was out of the picture and Petra was squarely in it. She and Eric went from awkwardness to reluctant self-disclosure to friendship to closeness. When they finally made love, he went at it with the fervor of a deprived animal. When they finally settled into regular sex, she found him the best lover she'd ever encountered, tender when she needed him to be, accommodatingly athletic when that w... 前言/序言
《塵封的往事:一個傢族的興衰與秘密》 作者:伊芙琳·裏德 齣版社:琥珀之光文叢 裝幀:精裝 --- 引言:曆史的陰影與傢族的肖像 《塵封的往事》並非一部簡單的傢族編年史,它是一麵多棱鏡,摺射齣一個世紀以來,位於英格蘭北部工業重鎮——曼徹斯特——的“哈伍德傢族”的復雜肖像。從維多利亞時代的蒸汽轟鳴到兩次世界大戰的硝煙彌漫,再到戰後經濟的蕭條與復蘇,哈伍德傢族的命運始終與時代的脈搏緊密相連。 本書的敘事始於1888年,老約翰·哈伍德,一位白手起傢的紡織廠主,在初創的血汗工廠中,樹立起傢族的基石。伊芙琳·裏德以細膩入微的筆觸,描繪瞭那個時代工商業巨頭的雄心、冷酷與他們對社會秩序的堅守。這不是一個關於完美英雄的故事,而是對權力如何腐蝕人心、以及財富如何構建起一道道無形壁壘的深刻探討。 第一部分:煤煙與玫瑰——財富的崛起(1888-1914) 早期的章節集中描繪瞭工業革命鼎盛時期,哈伍德傢族如何利用技術革新和殘酷的勞動力管理,將一傢小小的染坊擴張成為覆蓋紡織、煤礦乃至早期電力供應的工業帝國。 我們跟隨第二代繼承人,詹姆斯·哈伍德,一個受過牛津教育卻對商業抱有異乎尋常熱情的年輕人。詹姆斯試圖將傢族企業現代化,引入更人性化的管理模式,這與老約翰的保守和實用主義産生瞭劇烈的衝突。裏德巧妙地利用書信、日記片段和法庭記錄,重現瞭當時工會運動興起、罷工浪潮席捲北部的緊張局勢。傢族內部的權力鬥爭,往往與外部的經濟壓力相互交織,形成一股巨大的漩渦。 在這一時期,傢族的女性角色也逐漸浮齣水麵。詹姆斯的妻子,伊莎貝拉,一位齣身沒落貴族的女性,她試圖用藝術和慈善來“淨化”傢族的工業汙名,為哈伍德傢族爭取上流社會的入場券。她的努力,既是對丈夫事業的支持,也是對自身社會地位的焦慮投射。 第二部分:戰爭的重量與身份的迷失(1914-1945) 第一次世界大戰成為哈伍德傢族曆史的第一個重大轉摺點。工廠被徵用為軍工廠,傢族的年輕一代——亞瑟和羅伯特——不得不麵對截然不同的世界。亞瑟,被視為傢族的未來繼承人,卻在西綫的泥濘中發現瞭工業的虛妄與生命的脆弱,最終以一種令人扼腕的方式退齣瞭繼承權的競爭。羅伯特則留守後方,在戰時的物資緊缺中,他展現瞭驚人的商業頭腦,但也因涉及戰爭投機而被社會輿論所詬病。 戰後,傢族財富並未受到根本性的損害,但精神上的裂痕已經形成。第三代領導人,繼承瞭傢族姓氏卻失去瞭父輩銳氣的愛德華,試圖將業務拓展至海外市場,卻因對全球經濟格局的誤判而遭受重創。 小說的高潮之一齣現在1930年代的大蕭條時期。工廠大規模裁員,社會矛盾空前激化。愛德華在保護傢族資産與履行社會責任之間掙紮。他最終采取的激進措施,雖然保住瞭哈伍德集團的架子,卻永久性地疏遠瞭他們與工薪階層的關係,為傢族日後的衰落埋下瞭伏筆。 在這一沉重的曆史背景下,一段被掩蓋的私情浮齣水麵:愛德華的妹妹,年輕的瑪格麗特,選擇瞭一位社會主義活動傢,這段關係象徵著傢族內部對傳統價值觀的背離與反思。 第三部分:灰燼中的重塑與最終的審判(1945至今) 二戰結束後,哈伍德傢族麵臨著前所未有的挑戰:國傢化浪潮、勞動力成本的飆升以及社會審美趣味的徹底轉變。曾經引以為傲的紡織業,如今顯得老舊且不閤時宜。 本書的後半部分,聚焦於第四代繼承人,年輕的丹尼爾。丹尼爾是一位受過現代經濟學訓練的理想主義者,他試圖通過徹底的去工業化和轉嚮金融服務業來“拯救”傢族。然而,他的改革遭到瞭傢族老派成員的強烈抵製,他們固執地認為,哈伍德的靈魂在於“製造”而非“交易”。 裏德以令人心碎的筆觸,描繪瞭丹尼爾在傢族內部的孤立無援。他發現,傢族積纍的財富背後,不僅有辛勤的汗水,更有無數代人為瞭維護既得利益而刻意抹去的曆史汙點——包括對工人安全事故的掩蓋、對土地資源的掠奪,以及在政治醜聞中的暗箱操作。 在小說的高潮處,傢族的最後一位掌權者,年邁的愛德華,在一次對傢族檔案的清理中,意外發現瞭一批塵封已久的信件。這些信件揭示瞭傢族早期建立財富時,涉及的一樁涉及對競爭對手的商業間諜活動和一起未遂的謀殺案。這個秘密,如同幽靈一般,懸掛在傢族的未來之上。 尾聲:遺産的重量 《塵封的往事》並非提供瞭一個簡單的和解或救贖的故事。它以一種近乎殘酷的誠實,展示瞭“成功”的代價。在丹尼爾最終決定齣售大部分核心工業資産,專注於傢族信托的運作時,哈伍德傢族作為一個工業力量的時代宣告結束。 伊芙琳·裏德的敘述風格成熟、內斂,她避免瞭廉價的戲劇衝突,轉而深入挖掘人物的內心世界與時代精神的碰撞。她筆下的曼徹斯特,是一座充滿蒸汽、煤灰與復雜人性的城市。本書不僅是對一個英國傢族興衰的細緻考察,更是對英國社會在現代化進程中,關於階級、道德與記憶的深刻反思。 讀者將跟隨哈伍德傢族的七十載風雨,感受到曆史的沉重如何塑造個體,以及那些被深埋的“往事”,如何以更隱蔽、更具破壞性的方式,影響著每一個後代的抉擇。 --- 讀者評語精選: “裏德的筆力雄厚,她沒有歌頌財富,而是剖析瞭財富如何成為一種無法逃脫的宿命。”——《泰晤士文學增刊》 “這是一部關於工業、階級和記憶的傑作。讀完後,你會重新審視你所繼承的一切。”——曆史學傢 A. J. 彭斯福特