Retribution

Jilliane Hoffman

I started this book late on a Saturday. As I picked it up again Sunday afternoon, Maureen asked what was absorbing my attention, repeating her question twice before I looked up. I shared it was a mystery by a new author and “…it's good, but I don't think it will keep me awake”. I got to bed at 2:45 AM. I was half-right!

It's NYC, June 1988. Chloe Larson spends evenings in study groups preparing for the bar and a job at a top firm. As she prepares, a stalker is also preparing. In a hideous latex clown mask, he lies outside her first floor apartment window, blending in with thick foliage. The stalker is ready for this night, knowing Chloe's intimately from his break ins and surveillance. Tension builds from the start; Hoffman must be a student of Hitchcock thrillers (think Rear Window). The attack and torture last hours, yet the only attribute she can identify is the voice and a small tattoo revealed in a lightning strike.

After a breakdown, psychoanalysis, and a change scenery, Chloe has morphed into a nondescript, skilled prosecutor for Dade County, C.J. Townsend. She buries attractive physical characteristics that may have made her a target 12 years earlier. She has been part of a task force involved in a career making/breaking case that has garnered international media coverage for nearly a year. Crime scene photos go to “The Wall”, trying to make sense of senseless brutality.

Women disappear; later found long dead, heart collected as a souvenir, with no trace evidence that leads to any suspect--until a phone tip comes. Pull over William Bantling, a heartless body in the trunk. Chloe is drawn into the terror she tried to erase years ago. Or is this something else?