Blood Memory
Greg Iles
(Reviewer - Rebecca Brown)
2005 Scribner
ISBN: 0743234707

Dr. Catherine Ferry, a New Orleans forensic odontologist on the hunt for a serial killer, has childhood memories that are beginning to surface.

A series of bizarre, ritualized killings of totally unrelated middle-aged men is consuming Cat Ferry's days, when she's not thinking about her secret lover, or the meaning of the dreams that are haunting her.

The way Cat copes is by dunking herself under water, & holding her breath when most of us would have long since quit. There, in that quiet zone, she finds a kind of peace. She's in a swimming pool doing just this when Michael finds her. They used to go to the same school, & he's always had a crush on her. Now he's a pediatrician, & still single. Cat, on the other hand, has fallen for a string of unavailable older men with whom she has practiced dangerous lovemaking.

Cat Ferry left her Natchez home ruled by her grandfather, where her mother's family owns a large antebellum mansion & an island in the mighty Mississippi, as soon as she could. She was headed for a career in medicine with a hobby in deep free diving, except she got sidetracked into odontology -- the forensics of teeth. She rarely goes home because when she was eight years old she witnessed her father's violent death, & there's just too many bad memories there, & while Cat hated hunting with her grandfather, she's still a sure shot.

Over the past decade she's made a reputation as an Ice Queen at crime scenes, specializing in bite marks & the clues they provide, however, lately she's been blacking out when viewing a body. She's also a specialist in vodka & repetitive, terrifying nightmares. & now she's found out that she's pregnant.

Relieved from the case after collapsing over another dead body, Cat decides to go home & see if something there can explain what's happening to her. Except there, under the layers of Southern civility, something evil is festering... a soul-searing sin not mentioned in the Bible, & the lies everyone in her family keeps telling, in slightly different versions.

Blood Memory leapt off the library shelf as I was passing. I wasn't even looking for a something to read, just making a dash to the poets' corner. When I got home I made the mistake of opening the book... & I was gone. This is a deep immersion into an oppressive family & neighborly life, where children are the targets of one man's predilections, & the parents are controlled by fear.

Blood Memory is a suspenseful thriller about a national epidemic: child sexual abuse, & how the evil deeds of the past control the present. It is about the memories & the ever-present fear, the motives & the relationships, the hate-warped lives & the soul-killing madness survivors must live with. It is also about generations doing what was done unto them, & about the doctors whose lies make a person crazy & taint all they touch. It is also a tale of a passage through the hell of war, power & victimhood into action, truth & redemption. It is, ultimately, about giving in to evil or doing what is good.

I haven't read anything by Greg Iles before & after Blood Memory, I certainly will. He has a fluent, mesmerizing way with words & tenses.

More from Greg Iles:
The Footprints of God
The Quiet Game
24 Hours
Mortal Fear & more!
(07/31/05)

Rebecca