Synopsis
A reporter for the Bergen News, Chris Turley could never measure up to his father. Edward Turley, a combination of Bob Woodward and Ernie Pyle, was one of the last great investigative reporters and a difficult man to impress. While stuck covering press conferences and town hall meetings, Chris, his father's legend in mind, has always dreamed of his own Pulitzer, however unlikely it seems. Then one day while he's waiting to meet a source, a giant explosion takes out half of an office building next door. Shocked into action, Chris saves five people from the burning building. His firsthand account in the next day's paper makes him a hero and a celebrity. And that's not all. The source's next tip delivers a second headline-grabber of a story for Chris, and suddenly his career is looking a lot more like his dad's. But then it seems this anonymous source has had a plan for Chris all along, and his luck for being in the right place at the right time is not a coincidence at all...
Publishers Weekly
At the height of the Reign of Terror in 1793, an unknown killer is emulating the work of the guillotine by leaving beheaded corpses all over Paris in Alleyn's superior fourth Aristide Ravel mystery (after 2009's The Cavalier of the Apocalypse). Given the tight control of the republican government, the police don't realize that the deaths are part of a series, but eventually former justice minister Georges Danton asks Ravel to solve the case. With delicate peace negotiations with the English under way, Danton fears that word of the atrocities will jeopardize them. The pressure to catch the killer only increases as the roster of victims expands to include a member of the government. Alleyn brilliantly captures the paranoid spirit of the times, and inserts enough twists to keep most readers guessing. This entry approaches the quality of the historical fiction of such authors as Steven Saylor and Laura Joh Rowland. (Dec.)