MALICE (2009)

By Lisa Jackson

Kensington Books, 424 pages

★★★★★

 

There are dozens of books and movies titled Malice, but there’s only one Lisa Jackson. In my mind, she’s the queen of the high-octane mystery thriller. She also has a penchant for holding onto the reveal until the latest possible moment. I loved her 2009 book Malice.

 

If you’ve read works earlier than this one, you’ve probably already met detective Rick Bentz. If not, no worries, as there’s plenty of background that will bring you up to date but won’t ruin things if you go back to earlier works. You will learn that Rick was a ladies’ man in his feckless youth though, until recently, he was pretty bad at commitment and marriage. He worked in Los Angeles for many years, but left it after a shooting incident that haunts him. He also left unsolved a serial killer case involving a psychopath who killed young women on the eve of their 21^st birthdays. LA was where he married Jennifer, who was beautiful, hot, and reckless. A child, Kristi, occurred but was she Rick’s child or that of his brother, a disgraced priest and Jennifer’s lover? Things like that made Jennifer an ex-wife, though it took Benz a long time to extinguish the torch he carried for her. It didn’t help that Jennifer died in a messy car crash 12 years earlier in what was determined to be a suicide.

 

As the saying goes, Rick got out of Dodge (LA) and relocated to New Orleans, where he heads the detective department and has a resourceful partner named Montoya. Life is better there; New Orleans is nicknamed the Big Easy for a reason. Rick remarried there; Olivia is a sparkplug, a demon lover, and Rick’s biggest fan. The only strain is that he’s now 50, Olivia wants to bear his child, and Kristi is now a young adult. He’s been grumpy, though, as he almost died in a freak accident in which he nearly severed his spine. He’s recovering–slowly. Rick is bored out of his skull and tries to ignore his limp and aching leg but can’t.

 

Worse, he’s been having what he thinks are post-surgical hallucinations; he keeps seeing Jennifer, who quickly disappears. Then comes the cincher. A large envelop comes to his home with Jennifer’s death certificate and red question marks on it. Also enclosed are photographs of Jennifer at places in LA he recognizes, but are clearly in the present! How is this possible? Rick personally identified her bloody remains. Or did he? There’s only one to find out and he’s on medical leave, so against Olivia’s counsel he sets off to for LA and contacts his old buddy Hayes. He’s still LAPD, as are many others he knew, but most of them think Rick is nuts and the other half never liked him in the first place.  

 

Rick keeps spotting Jennifer, but she gets away each time, even if she has to drive like the Freeway is the Bonneville Salt Flats or high dive off Santa Monica pier. Bentz assumes he’s being played, but by whom? How is it that his elusive quarry is a dead ringer (!) for Jennifer and knows things about him that no one else knows? As things go wrong, Rick begins to doubt that Jennifer really died. And, boy, do they go wrong. There are several new cases with the M.O. of the 21 Killer, and several women who knew Jennifer are murdered, as is a cop. Even Olivia is in deep jeopardy. Try as he will, Rick can’t connect the dots. As previously noted, Jackson holds onto her heart-thumping resolution for nearly the entire novel. Malice might be an overused title, but it fits this novel like a garrote.

 

Jackson reverses the old Sherlock Holmes rule that if all other explanations fail, the last, no matter how improbable, must be the truth. I was able to figure out the how of the mystery, but I was way off on the who. I owe a sincere apology to all of the perps I fingered who were totally innocent.

 

Rob Weir