"Jump Cut (Criminal Minds #1)
The Behavioral Analysis Unit, an elite team of FBI profilers, are tasked with examining the nation's most twisted criminal minds-anticipating their next moves before they strike again...
The BAU team is dispatched to Lawrence, Kansas, to investigate a series of fatal stabbings among the town's homeless population. The victims have all been found freshly bathed, neatly groomed, and wearing new clothes. To profiler Jason Gideon, these look like carefully staged murders in isolated settings, fulfilling the sick fantasies of one or more Unknown Subjects.
When the kidnapping of a young heiress presents a second, seemingly unrelated crime for the BAU to help solve, Gideon deduces a sinister connection, despite the variance in MOs. The kidnap victim must be found - before she too is a player in the mind games of a pair of UnSubs who are inventing horrific new ways to kill.
"Road to Purgatory"
It’s 1942 and – from the Atlantic to the Pacific – the world is torn apart. Ten years ago Michael O’Sullivan accompanied his gangster father on the road, fleeing from the mobsters who killed his mother and young brother.
After an idyllic upbringing by loving adoptive parents in a small Midwestern town, Michael is now deep in the jungles of Bataan, carrying a tommy gun like his father’s, fighting the Japanese.
When brutal combat unearths deep-buried feelings of violence and revenge, Michael O’Sullivan returns to the homefront, a battle-scarred veteran of twenty-two, ready to pick up his old war against the Chicago mob.
Suddenly, Michael “Satariano” must become one of the enemy, working his way quickly up to the trusted side of Frank Nitti, Al Capone’s heir, putting himself – and his soul – in harm’s way.
Leaving behind his heartbroken childhood sweetheart, the war hero enters a limbo of crime and corruption – his only allies: Eliot Ness, seeking one last hurrah as a gangbuster; and a lovely nightclub singer playing her own dangerous game.
Even as Michael embraces his father’s memory to battle the Mob from within – leaving bodies and broken lives in his wake – he finds himself sucked into the very way of life he abhors.
In a parallel tale set in 1922, Michael O’Sullivan, Sr., chief enforcer for Irish godfather John Looney, is about to become a father. The bidding of Looney – and the misdeeds of the ganglord’s crazed son Connor – put the happy O’Sullivan home at risk.
Both Michaels reach a crossroads of violence and compromise as two tales converge into the purgatory of good men trapped in bad lives.
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An interesting book
from an historical
angle as well as a
mystery one.
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Max Allan Collins has insinuated his Chicago detective Nate Heller into some of history's most notorious events: Dillinger outside the Biograph Theater, Huey Long, the Lindbergh kidnapping, Amelia Earhart's disappearance and many more. In "Target Lancer" Collins has Nathan Heller in the middle of perhaps America's biggest mystery/conspiracy~the assassination of President John F. Kennedy.
In "Target Lancer" Collins avoids Dallas entirely, instead focusing on the often overlooked but very real plot to kill Kennedy in November, 1963...in Chicago. In the Windy City, the players set in motion what eventually will come tragically to fruition just a few weeks later and change the face of the nation forever.
As always, Collins skillfully weaves his fictional detective into the fabric of real people, places and events~ creating another thought provoking, highly entertaining and incredibly accurate portrait of history. Of COURSE there is conjecture, even now almost 50 years later, the murder of JFK still is the subject of debate. But Collins sews his theory together with actual people like Sam Giancana, Jimmy Hoffa, Jake Rubenstein (aka Jack Ruby) and a little known Thomas A. Vallee, a Chicago resident who bears more than a few similar characteristics to his Dallas counterpart Lee Oswald.
If you are a JFK assassination buff, or interested in recent American history this book is a must-read. If you're a Chicagoan, I recommend "Target Lancer" for its perfectly accurate portrait of 1960s Chicago, from the Loop to Old Town--amazingly precise. If you just happen to enjoy a good mystery, let this fact based novel unfold before you as a well-written "whodunit.
A frequent Mystery Writers of America "Edgar" nominee, he has earned an unprecedented fifteen Private Eye Writers of America "Shamus" nominations for his historical thrillers, winning for his Nathan Heller novels, True Detective (1983) andStolen Away (1991). His graphic novel Road to Perdition is the basis of the Academy Award-winning film starring Tom Hanks, directed by Sam Mendes.
His many comics credits include the syndicated strip "Dick Tracy"; his own "Ms. Tree"; "Batman"; and CSI: Crime Scene Investigation, based on the hit TV series for which he has also written video games, jigsaw puzzles, and a bestselling series of novels (for Pocket Books) that has sold over 1.5 copies in America alone.
