SURVIVOR IN DEATH

One witness, two killers, five murders. Eve Dallas investigates.

Trouble is, the witness is only nine and didn’t see much in the dark. But it’s clear that Nixie Swisher was supposed to die right along with her mother, father, brother, and housekeeper. Thanks to her late-night craving for an Orange Fizzy, Nixie escaped, though her best friend got her throat cut with chilling precision. All Eve (Visions in Death, p. 601) can do is step over the bodies and start connecting the dots with every security gizmo and techno-toy available in 2059 New York. But nothing adds up. Grant Swisher was a do-good lawyer who got battered women out of life-threatening relationships. Keelie Swisher was a nutritionist. Who’d murder a sweet-faced vitamin pusher? The housekeeper, Inge Snood, happened to be in the wrong place—her own bed—at the wrong time. The kids—were just kids. But Eve can’t help seeing a reflection of her own horrific childhood in Nixie’s terrified eyes, and she wants to save this kid. She pulls rank on Meredith Norman, the social worker from Child Protection Services, so Nixie can stay with her and billionaire husband Roark for a while. Meredith is required to put the kid in protective custody, but Eve won’t let that happen. Then a few things begin to add up. Meredith goes missing, and when her torture-marked corpse is found and the two cops guarding the gates are slain as well, the questions fly thick and fast (and the sentences get even shorter). Are cold-blooded operatives for covert government agencies running amok and killing for hire? Are evil brutes, separated at birth but with a shared thirst for blood, carrying out vendettas either for the hell of it or following a hellish ideology of their own? Eve and Roark find a link to someone bent on vengeance and follow a trail to heartland America and back to New York. And, yup, they kick a lot of butt.

Tough-talking thriller with a matchless pace.