From AudioFile
When you can't even trust your partner, conducting a criminal investigation takes on a new set of challenges. Forensic psychiatrist Dr. Sylvia Strange must find the key to a multiple murder case in which scientists around the world are being killed by deadly neurotoxins. Her partner, Edmund Sweetheart, won't give her all the information she needs. Joyce Bean keeps up with the story in fine style, maintaining energy throughout a fast-paced plot. Bean employs a narrative style even in dialogue, a choice that proves competent enough to accommodate her lack of overt characterization. A few players, such as Strange's foster daughter, receive voices of their own, and these touches provide the needed points of light in a very dark thriller. R.P.L. © AudioFile 2003, Portland, Maine-- Copyright © AudioFile, Portland, Maine
From Booklist
Here's the latest mystery featuring Dr. Sylvia Strange, a forensic psychologist who frequently assists the FBI in cracking really tough cases. This time out, Strange and FBI counterterrorism expert Edmond Sweetheart are trying to build a case against a woman they're convinced is systematically killing people while working on a top-secret Department of Defense project involving lethal toxins. But there are a couple of problems: their suspect is a highly placed member of the project team and is the daughter of an eminent and well-respected scientist. Can Strange and Sweetheart--Lovett does have a knack for unusual names--solve the case before more people die? As usual, the author packs the novel with plenty of forensic-psychiatry info (the book is a real treat for fans of that field) and creates a genuinely suspenseful story that will keep readers glued to their seats until the very end. David Pitt
Copyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved
Book Description
Dr. Sylvia Strange - forensic psychiatrist and expert on criminal sexuality - returns in a thrilling new suspense novel and comes head-to-head with a terrifying serial killer whose weapon of choice is a poison nearly impossible to trace and, when ingested, nearly impossible to counteract. A baffling series of deaths have occurred over the span of a decade in some of the most prestigious research laboratories around the world. Now Dr. Sylvia Strange, forensic expert, and criminal profiler Edmund Sweetheart, FBI consultant, are called in to investigate what is looking like murder. Their prime suspect is Dr. Christine Palmer, a brilliant scientist whose work with scientific think tanks around the world made her one of three scientists knowledgeable about exotic neurotoxins and their antidotes. What follows is a taut and terrifying investigation, in which Sylvia finds herself able to trust no one - but herself.
Download Description
"Sylvia Strange is back in a hair-raising chiller from the acclaimed author of Dantes' Inferno and Acquired Motives. A string of deaths in laboratories around the world has the scientific community on edge -- and the FBI on high alert. To the FBI, the circumstances surrounding the scientists' deaths spell the work of an unusually skilled serial poisoner, and they have zeroed in on a single suspect: the brilliant, beautiful Dr. Christine Palmer. A world-renowned toxicologist and leader of numerous international research teams, Palmer is one of only a handful of scientists with highly classified knowledge of the deadliest experimental neurotoxins and their antidotes. When a molecular toxicologist is poisoned while working at a top-secret research facility outside Santa Fe, Dr. Sylvia Strange and counterterrorism expert Edmond Sweetheart are recruited to assemble a psychological profile of Palmer in an effort to link her to the crimes. But as Sylvia's investigation of Palmer's charismatic persona draws her ever more strongly into the scientist's orbit, hunter and hunted become perilously intertwined. And when Sylvia discovers that her partner may be withholding crucial information, she no longer knows who can be trusted: is the killer friend or foe? Sylvia will risk everything she holds dear, only to learn that there is no safe haven from a voyeuristic killer whose weapon of choice may go undetected in the food you eat, the clothes you wear, or the air you breathe. "
Dark Alchemy FROM THE PUBLISHER
"A string of deaths in laboratories around the world has the scientific community on edge - and the FBI on high alert. To the FBI, the circumstances surrounding the scientists' deaths spell the work of an unusually skilled serial poisoner, and they have zeroed in on a single suspect: the brilliant, beautiful Dr. Christine Palmer. A world-renowned toxicologist and leader of numerous international research teams, Palmer is one of only a handful of scientists with highly classified knowledge of the deadliest experimental neurotoxins and their antidotes." "When a molecular toxicologist is poisoned while working at a top-secret facility outside Santa Fe, Dr. Sylvia Strange and counterterrorism expert Edmond Sweetheart are recruited to assemble a psychological profile of Palmer in an effort to link her to the crimes. But as Sylvia's investigation of Palmer's charismatic persona draws her ever more strongly into the scientist's orbit, hunter and hunted become perilously intertwined. And when Sylvia discovers that her partner may be withholding crucial information, she no longer knows who can be trusted; is the killer friend or foe?" Sylvia will risk everything she holds dear, only to learn that there is no safe haven from a voyeuristic killer whose weapon of choice may go undetected in the food you eat, the clothes you wear, or the air you breathe.
FROM THE CRITICS
AudioFile
When you can't even trust your partner, conducting a criminal investigation takes on a new set of challenges. Forensic psychiatrist Dr. Sylvia Strange must find the key to a multiple murder case in which scientists around the world are being killed by deadly neurotoxins. Her partner, Edmund Sweetheart, won't give her all the information she needs. Joyce Bean keeps up with the story in fine style, maintaining energy throughout a fast-paced plot. Bean employs a narrative style even in dialogue, a choice that proves competent enough to accommodate her lack of overt characterization. A few players, such as Strange's foster daughter, receive voices of their own, and these touches provide the needed points of light in a very dark thriller. R.P.L. © AudioFile 2003, Portland, Maine
Kirkus Reviews
Psychological profiler Sylvia Strange keeps matching wits against ever-more-daunting adversaries. Now, like a successful video-game heroine, she's graduated from a fictional version of the Unabomber (Dantes' Inferno, 2001) to a bioterrorist who could have stepped out of tomorrow's headlines. For several years now, somebody has been dispatching an unknown number of victims (6? 10? 15?) with a range of neurotoxins so frighteningly varied that nobody's suspected a thing-until the FBI connects the demise of Doug Thomas-a Los Alamos toxicologist who was moonlighting on some sinister scheme when he killed himself in a senseless auto collision while he was feeling no pain-to that of Samantha Grayson, a biochemical graduate assistant in London's Porton Down research center whose distraught fiancﾽ, Paul Lang, just happens to be an analyst for British Intelligence. Before the curtain even goes up on the ensuing investigation, the somebody has already been identified as Dr. Christine Palmer, a brilliant neurotoxin researcher whose late father, Dr. Fielding Palmer, was an even more celebrated immunologist and AIDS expert. Christine, counterterrorist expert Edmond Sweetheart tells Sylvia, is one cold piece of work, a calculating, possessive, dispassionate scientist who likes to watch her victims' slow deaths up close not because she's sadistic but because she's curious. And sure enough, after a couple of singularly unrevealing rounds of investigation at Los Alamos and Porton Down, Christine, who's much too smart to leave any evidence or let the swarming authorities get under her skin, has a chance to get up close and personal with the latest victim in her sights: about-to-be-married Sylvia, who's sureshe's being poisoned but can't figure out how. A killer whose emotional remoteness is less scary than simply blank, coupled with Lovett's plodding habit of explaining everything under the sun, from the mission of MI-6 to the meaning of "angelita," makes Sylvia's fifth outing less threatening than a morning newspaper. Agent: Theresa Park/Sanford J. Greenburger
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