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Overview
In her latest adventure, Jane Whitefield, who helps people in trouble disappear from one life and establish a new identity, is hired by a Las Vegas gambling casino executive running from contract killers. But the killers are on the trail of the shadow woman and soon Jane becomes the principle target of their rage and revenge.From the Hardcover edition.
Synopsis
Jane Whitefield inadvertently becomes the target of two professional assassins in this “compelling [and] truly frightening” (Chicago Tribune) thriller from the award-winning author of The Butcher’s Boy. “[Thomas] Perry keeps the screws turned until the final page; suspense novels don’t get much more suspenseful.”—The Cleveland Plain Dealer Jane Whitefield is a name to be whispered like a prayer. A shadow woman who rescues the helpless and the hunted when their enemies leave them no place to hide. Now with the bone-deep cunning of her Native American forebears, she arranges a vanishing act for Pete Hatcher, a Las Vegas gambling executive. It should be a piece of cake, but she doesn’t yet know about Earl and Linda—professional destroyers who will cash in if Hatcher dies, killers who love to kill . . . slowly. From Vegas to upstate New York to the Rockies, the race between predator and prey slowly narrows until at last they share an intimacy broken only by death. . . .Editorials
Publishers Weekly -
From the disappearance of Pete Hatcher during a Las Vegas magic show to the satisfying denouement, Perry's third Jane Whitefield thriller (following Dance for the Dead, 1996) delivers in full: a well-paced and complex plot, intriguing characters (including a chillingly psychotic couple who make a living as killers) and enough suspense to keep the pages turning all day on the beach or late into the night. Whitefield, of Seneca Indian descent, is a "guide" who helps people disappear from their current troubled lives into new ones free of whatever dangers are dogging them. She gives them new identities, new locations and then returns to her own safely hidden home base. But in helping Pete, a Pleasure Inc. Casino bigwig distrusted by his bosses, Jane is up against Earl and Linda Thompson, crazy, ruthless and competent assassins. When they pick up Pete's trail, Jane must snatch him away again. Linda and Earl are relentless in their pursuit, tracking Pete and Jane and backtracking to threaten Jane at her home base. Perry's accounts of assuming a new identity or hiding in plain sight, and of learning to break old habits so as not to give yourself away are fascinating. Linda and Earl's countermoves are terrifying in equal measure. From big city to small town and into the wilds of Montana, Perry leads his readers on a galvanizing chase along a twisting, thrilling course. (July) FYI: Random has contracted with Perry for four more Whitefield thrillers to be written over the next four years.Library Journal
In this third Jane Whitefield mystery, a part-Native woman engineers the "disappearance" of Peter Hatcher from his old life at Pleasure, Inc., a gambling casino. But the casino's honchos think Pete knows too much about their expansion plans and hire a brutally vicious hit team to find, and assassinate, him. The elements of the previous mysteries (Vanishing Act, Dance for the Dead) are here, but they don't work quite as well this time around. The chases are more predictable, and the lead characters a little too stilted, especially Jane, who plans to give up her "career" and disappear into marriage as the wife of physician/lover Carey McKinnon. Is this Whitefield's last outing? Perry's qualities as a novelist shine in such Elmore Leonard-esque thrillers as Metzger's Dog. For series fans.Kirkus Reviews
Marriage doesn't stop Jane Whitefield (Dance for the Dead, 1996, etc.) from taking on one last hazardous disappearing act for a client whose pursuers just won't give up.As part of her agreement to tie the knot with her longtime suitor Dr. Carey McKinnon, Jane promises she'll stop helping people to vanish. All she wants is to fade into the woodwork—which is precisely how she thought she'd already helped Pete Hatcher, the Las Vegas bagman who knew too much about the shady doings of his bosses at Pleasure, Inc. But Hatcher, a sociable fellow who can't resist the ladies, hasn't been able to adapt to the monklike identity Jane created for him in Denver; a few careless moves, and Pleasure's hired killers are onto him. And these aren't ordinary killers: Earl Bliss gets off on tracking and killing people, and his partner, Linda Thompson, keeps up her energy level by inventing erotic fantasies in which she watches Earl kill men she's gotten involved with. When they fail to take out Hatcher, he puts in a frantic call to Jane—who leaves Carey waiting in the old homestead while she goes on the road this one last time. So while Jane's spiriting Hatcher out of Denver and Earl is hustling to pick up her trail—which will lead to a bravura chase on foot through Glacier National Park—Linda takes the search to Jane's home turf by following her paper trail to upstate New York, introducing herself to lonely Carey, and mining Jane's house for every clue she can scrounge about her quarry's current whereabouts—a job made all too easy by the fact that well-meaning Carey hasn't a clue about how to keep a life-or- death secret.
Jane's third adventure is another masterfully inverted detective story—you root for the prey instead of the murderous investigators. The suspense is unrelenting.