A Good Day to Die

by Stephen Solomita

Overview

Two cops hunt a serial killer, and a young blind woman fights to stay alive. Crossing Flatbush Avenue is never easy, and for Lorraine Cho, it╔s the most dangerous part of her day. Her job as a medical report transcriber is on the other side of Flatbush - and Lorraine was blinded in an accident several years ago. She is waiting to cross one evening when a stranger offers to help. Just before they reach the safety of the sidewalk, Lorraine╔s benefactor shoves her into the back of a van and speeds away. Across town at police headquarters, Roland Means toils in purgatory. A street cop with a violent streak, he╔s on ice in the ballistics lab, waiting while the New York Police Department tries to decide whether he╔s a psychopath or a thug. Lucky for him, a serial killer has been terrorizing New York, and Captain Vanessa Bouton needs a tough detective. Bouton wants evidence to prove a cover-up theory, and Means is willing to be cannon fodder just to get back on the street. Though neither of them knows it, Lorraine Cho╔s life is in their hands.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9783958594449
Publisher:	Mysterious Press at Bastei Entertainment
Publication date:	07/31/2015
Sold by:	Readbox
Format:	eBook
Pages:	297
File size:	936 KB

Editorial Reviews

Solomita's ( A Twist of the Knife ; Bad to the Bone ) latest novel is a relentlessly talky book, filled with acts of violence unimaginatively described. Roland Means, a chronic maverick in the NYPD, is pulled from cop purgatory--ballistics duty--to go after ``King Thong,'' the supposed serial killer responsible for the murder of seven male prostitutes in New York City. Vanessa Bouton, a black cop, hates Means's guts but needs his streetwise methods to help prove her hunch that only one killing was prompted by a motive, which the other six are meant to mask. What she doesn't know (although readers learn it early) is that a psychotic couple has abducted a young blind Asian woman who is the latest victim in the bloody rampage that has claimed 23 women along with the seven gay men. To be more than simply gratuitous, the brutality of the action here calls for subtler storytelling skills than Solomita employs. Means, the first-person narrator of much of the story, is a boastful, self-centered chump of a he-man. The effect of his machismo on Bouton is predictable; nor is there much surprise in the fate of the sympathetically portrayed abducted girl. The killers' motivations are satisfyingly twisted but also have a somewhat predictable ring. (Oct.)

Publishers Weekly - Publisher's Weekly

Solomita ( A Piece of the Action , Putnam, 1992) offers another excellent thriller written with insight and gripping suspense. In New York City, Lorraine Cho, a recently blinded Asian American, is kidnapped and held captive in a remote forest by a psychotic couple. At the same time, two New York City cops, African American Vanessa Bouton and Native American Roland Means, are assigned to track down ``King Thong,'' a serial killer of gay prostitutes. Bouton, an ambitious NYPD captain, plays strictly by the books, while Means, a streetwise detective, plays by his own rules. Despite their mutual contempt, Bouton and Means join forces to discover the link between these two apparently unrelated cases. As Means researches the profiled backgrounds of serial killers, he recognizes his own abused childhood; his search for the killer becomes a search for himself. This multiethnic thriller vividly depicts the gritty streets of the city, the dark and feral forest, and the danger lurking in both. Recommended for public libraries.-- Stacie Browne Chandler, Plymouth P . L . , Mass.

Library Journal

Ever hear the term "gaper's block" when listening to traffic reports and think, "Not me," only to find yourself staring at the next wreck you pass? This truly creepy tale is like that. All suspense fans have read this book before: psycho killers kidnap sweet young thing; mismatched cops bitch at each other while building mutual respect as they follow tiny clues to the killers' lair. Despite the predictability of the plot--including the obligatory parallel story lines--the mayhem and the meanness, this is the car wreck we can't "not" watch. It all starts when a blind young Asian American girl is kidnapped off the New York streets by an incestuous daddy-daughter duo. Her terror in the face of their abuse is one story line. Solomita couldn't have devised a more uncomfortable premise: the psychosexual abuse of a handicapped person. The very idea makes you want to turn away in disgust, but, like the gapers, you do the opposite: you keep turning pages.

Wes Lukowsky