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Lisa Jackson has written a number of intriguing series titles built around attractive but realistic characters who are experiencing unusual but believable adventures in exotic settings. Perhaps Jackson's greatest strength is her ability to balance the romantic with the suspenseful, providing enough elements of both genres to attract the respective fans of each and molding them into a storyline that holds the attention of both sets of readers. Her eagerly anticipated SHIVER meets all expectations and is a prime example of how a talented writer can broaden the horizons and appeal of disparate audiences.
SHIVER marks the return of Police Detective Reuben Montoya to pre-Katrina New Orleans, where he is thrust into the middle of a high-profile murder investigation. It begins when the bodies of Luke Gierman, a local radio shock jock, and a young college student are found. Initially thought to be a murder-suicide, the bizarre staging of the killing and the lack of a cohesive link between the two individuals quickly lead the police to believe that both were homicide victims.
The investigation brings Montoya into contact with Abby Chastain, Gierman's ex-wife. Chastain, the subject of an on-air rant by Gierman shortly before his death, is a logical but unlikely suspect. When a local munitions manufacturer and the head of a social organization are found murdered under somewhat similar circumstances, with a further link to Chastain, Montoya begins to understand the pattern of the killings, even as he becomes more emotionally enamored with Chastain. It also becomes clear to the reader that the unknown murderer is growing more obsessed with Chastain and that the key to it all may be the closed, but not-quite-abandoned, mental hospital where Chastain's mother fell to her death decades before; this may hold the key to her own fate as well.
As always, Jackson paints with an atmospheric brush dipped in subtle darkness. The novel is focused more on Chastain than Montoya, yet Montoya is a brooding, attractive presence as he draws in the killer --- even as he and Chastain pirouette around each other as they're pulled slowly yet inexorably closer, and Chastain becomes the penultimate target of a killer who is as mysterious and brutal as he is clever and cunning.
SHIVER is fully deserving of its status as the first of Jackson's works to be published initially in hardcover. And while it has a definite ending, SHIVER gives promise to new beginnings in its conclusions --- not only for Montoya, but also for Chastain. This is one novel that Jackson fans will not want to miss.
--- Reviewed by Joe Hartlaub
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