Part 37 (2/2)

When a vicious rapist crosses the line into murder, Detective John Thinnes and his p.r.i.c.kly new partner draft psychiatrist Jack Caleb to help them track the killer down.

When a young woman is brutally raped in the posh Lincoln Park neighborhood, Chicago Police detective John Thinnes catches the case-even though Thinnes hates working rapes. Worse yet, he has to deal with a new female detective who has a chip on her shoulder the size of a 12 gauge shotgun.

A second victim is murdered, and the rapes become ”heater cases.” What started as a simple investigation, soon twists around earlier, similar crimes. Tempers flare; the detective squad polarizes across the gender line. Dr. Jack Caleb, a psychiatrist and police consultant, is asked to mediate. But Thinnes's sometime-ally finds himself with conflicts of interest occasioned by their friends.h.i.+p and Caleb's own disturbing case load.

The investigation ranges from Chicago's Lincoln Park to the northern Illinois city of Waukegan. And the explosive climax explores not only the karma of evil but the beginning of a beautiful Feline Friends.h.i.+p.

White Tiger.

In Vietnam, white is the color of death. The 1997 murder of a Vietnamese woman in Chicago's Uptown neighborhood brings Dr. Jack Caleb and Detective John Thinnes together to catch another Vietnamese transplant-a deadly criminal known only as the White Tiger.

The TV news report of a woman's murder in Uptown leaves psychiatrist Jack Caleb flas.h.i.+ng back to Vietnam and sends him running to his own shrink.

a.s.signed to investigate, Chicago detectives John Thinnes and Don Franchi find the victim's son, Tien Lee, curiously unmoved by his mother's death. Their preliminary canva.s.s of the dead woman's building and neighborhood reveals that Hue An Lee was well liked and well off, and she had never quarreled with anyone but her ”good son.”

Attending the autopsy next morning, Thinnes realizes that he knew the victim when he was stationed in Vietnam-twenty-four years earlier. Thinnes is pulled off the case when an anonymous tipster alleges he'd been intimate enough with Mrs. Lee to have fathered her son. But Thinnes can't let go. And when a schizophrenic man shows up at Mrs. Lee's wake, connecting the deceased to another Vietnam vet and to an unsolved murder in wartime Saigon, Thinnes starts a retrospective investigation of that crime. He solicits Dr. Caleb's help. Tien Lee complicates the case by insisting that the paternity allegation is an insult to his dead mother. He tries to keep Thinnes on the case.

Dr. Caleb's therapy leads him to relive his own in Vietnam War experiences. When he's brought into the Lee case by a request to help the schizophrenic mourner, Caleb teams up with Thinnes and his partner to discover the ident.i.ty of the White Tiger and to set a trap for the elusive killer.

M.I.A.

This gripping novel of suspense is a tale of violent men and violent pa.s.sions, of missing friends, of loss and love and discovery.

The accidental death of Rhiann Fahey's second husband leaves her paralyzed by grief and has her son Jimmy cutting school and drinking. The widow's problems are compounded by unwanted advances from her dead husband's friend. She does her best to cope, returning to work, dealing patiently with Jimmy's misbehavior, telling Rory Sinter she isn't interested.

Then a mysterious stranger moves next door. John Devlin offers Rhiann beer and sympathy. He offers Jimmy work.

When Sinter tries to discredit John, then beat him to death, Rhiann comes to John's rescue. But she discovers her perfect neighbor isn't what he'd seemed-which leads her to investigate, and to see John in a different light altogether.

A beautifully written story with characters who come to life from the first page, M.I.A. shows one more side of Michael Allen Dymmoch's powerful storytelling ability.

The Fall.

How far would you go to save your life and your world?

After a nasty divorce, single mother Joanne Lessing finally has her life together, and she's made a name for herself as a photographer. Then, while on a.s.signment, she witnesses a hit and run. Property damage only. No big deal, she thinks. So she does the right thing-calls the cops. Joanne is dismayed when FBI agents arrive with the local detective. They admit the hit and run driver was a mob killer fleeing the scene of his latest hit. Joanne is relieved to find she can't really identify the hit man.

But when she sees the killer again while on another a.s.signment, she takes his picture and finds her new life and her son's future threatened. Caught between the Mob and the FBI, she's on her own...

Also by Michael Allen Dymmoch.

The Fall.

M.I.A.

Caleb & Thinnes Mysteries.

The Man Who Understood Cats.

Incendiary Designs.

The Feline Friends.h.i.+p.

White Tiger.

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