Slipping into Darkness
Peter Blauner
(Reviewer - Rebecca Brown)
2006 Little, Brown & Co
ISBN: 0316098663

A 20 year-old murder, a killer freed early, & another death has two men hunting each other.

Detective Francis X. Loughlin started his career with a bang - he got a 17-year-old suspect to confess to things he shouldn't have, which got him sent up to the slammer. Now Julian Vega is out on a technicality, early. & there's been another murder with the same MO.

Loughlin finds the years in prison have changed Vega, for one he's grown from a youth to a man, & he's no longer the eager-to-please, overachiever, sci-fi fan Loughlin had met in the interrogation room, a lifetime ago.

Still, some things never change & when Loughlin arranges a DNA test to nail his man, the results blow up in his face. There's one thing in this case that Loughlin is sure of - the blood under the latest victim's fingernails isn't Vega's, it's not even a man's - it belongs to the woman who was murdered 20 years before.

Come enter Peter Blauner's murky territory where, only too often, right bleeds into wrong, & the truth hides in the most unexpected places.

Not my usual fare Slipping into Darkness is hair-raising, infuriating & one helluva read! Shivered my timbers & befuddled my senses of “how could that be?” A veritable “cat & mouse” case!

More from Peter Blauner:
The Last Good Day
The Intruder
(01/01/06)

Rebecca