Nine

by Jan Burke

Overview

Hailed by reviewers and fellow authors alike, Edgar Award winner Jan Burke has won a legion of devoted readers with her witty, ingeniously crafted novels featuring Irene Kelly. Now Burke, who earned critical acclaim for her stunning departure novel, Flight, returns with another electrifying thriller: Nine will hold readers in thrall until the breathtaking conclusion.
When a brutal felon on the FBI's Ten Most Wanted list turns up dead in Los Angeles County, few mourn him; in fact, the public begins to cheer his unknown assailants as heroes. But as more brutalized corpses of fugitive outlaws are found, Sheriff's Homicide Detective Alex Brandon knows that the vigilante group the public has nicknamed "The Exterminators" may be far more ruthless and sadistic than its victims.
The corpses bear eerie similarities to victims of a serial killer investigated by Brandon ten years ago. The perpetrator died at the hands of his own deeply traumatized teenaged stepson, Kit Logan. Logan, protected by his wealthy family, never spent a day in jail; instead, he was sent to a private reform school for the truant sons of L.A.'s most affluent. Alex Brandon, unable to locate Logan for questioning, has a chilling sense he is being manipulated. But why?
A terrifying novel that asks what happens when justice is no longer enough, Nine introduces an unforgettable protagonist. A modern morality tale, it is another captivating gem from an acclaimed master of mystery and suspense.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780743233347
Publisher:	Simon & Schuster
Publication date:	11/06/2002
Sold by:	SIMON & SCHUSTER
Format:	eBook
Pages:	384
Sales rank:	150,633
File size:	1 MB

About the Author

National bestseller Jan Burke is the author of a dozen novels and a collection of short stories. Among the awards her work has garnered are Mystery Writers of America’s Edgar® for Best Novel, Malice Domestic’s Agatha Award, Mystery Readers International’s Macavity, and the RT Book Club’s Best Contemporary Mystery. She is the founder of the Crime Lab Project (CrimeLabProject.com) and is a member of the board of the California Forensic Science Institute. She lives in Southern California with her husband and two dogs. Learn more about her at JanBurke.com.

Read an Excerpt

Chatper 1

SUNDAY, MAY 18, 1:17 P.M.

THE ROCKY MOUNTAINS, COLORADO

A black-winged bird swooped past Kit's left shoulder, and he shied away from it, crouching down low, half losing his balance. The heavy bundle he carried fell from his arms, landing on the leaf-strewn path with a soft thud. This seemed to him another ill omen, and he quickly and silently apologized to the canvas-wrapped form. He cowered there for a moment, cringing as the raven circled back -- but the bird flew higher this time and soon was gone from sight. He waited in vain for his fear to follow it.

What did it mean, a raven coming so close to him?

Make sense, he warned himself. Don't think crazy thoughts about birds.

But fear proved tenacious, and his mind caromed through a maze of remembered terrors. He began shaking.

He made a determined effort to steer his thoughts toward the logical. The raven was a bird, not a supernatural creature. The raven had been attracted to the burden Kit carried into the woods.

You are not a boy, he told himself. You are a twenty-six-year-old man. Don't act like a child.

He told himself it was the chill of the autumn air that made him feel cold -- not his dread, not his superstition. Not that he had dreamed the digging dream just last night.

A beetle moved over the canvas, and he brushed it away, then gently lifted the bundle again. "I'm sorry," he said once more and continued into the woods.

When he was first deciding on a place for the burial, Kit had thought of one with a view. But no one knew better than he did that killers often buried their victims in such places, and so he had searched for a location only he could find again, where the markers would not be so obvious to anyone else.

When he came to the chosen site, he carefully set the bundle aside and steeled himself for the next chore.

The digging.

The ground was not as hard here as in other places in the woods, but he found this task so difficult to begin, he nearly decided to choose some other way. A glance at the canvas bundle brought back his resolve -- the other choices were not fitting.

Inside his leather gloves, his hands were slick with perspiration. He took hold of the small spade. The grating ring of its first stab into the earth made him dizzy, but again he took himself to task. He looked at the hard muscles of his arms, his large hands, his booted feet. He fitted his strength into a harness of remembered movement -- thrust and step and lift and swing, thrust and step and lift and swing -- settling into a rhythm divorced from thought, a familiar cadence that lulled him into the mindless completion of his work.

Still, he was weeping by the time he settled the small body into its resting place, and wept as he covered it. He placed a layer of stones within the grave when it was half-filled, to discourage scavengers. This he covered with soil. When he finished, he gathered leaves and spread them over the surface, so that it blended in with its surroundings. He stood back and looked at the grave from several different angles. When he felt confident that it was unlikely to be found, even by someone who was looking for it, he packed the spade away.

He had a kind of expertise in burial.

As he reached the ridge, he saw smoke coming from the cabin's chimney. He began running.

Spooky had found the matches.

Copyright © 2002 by Jan Burke

Editorial Reviews

The Barnes & Noble Review
In Jan Burke's popular mystery series featuring reporter Irene Kelly and her detective spouse Frank Harriman, the boundaries between good and evil are clearly delineated. Nine explores murkier areas, where some people are bad, some worse, and even the best may be responsible for tragic mistakes in the past.

The novel introduces Los Angeles homicide detective Alex Hartwick, who is investigating the brutal murder of a notorious drug dealer. It soon becomes evident that this is just the first in a series of murders whose victims are all on the FBI's Most Wanted list, and Hartwick is plunged into a complicated case that's somehow connected to Kit Logan, a young man still tormented by horrific abuse at the hands of his serial-killer stepfather years earlier. From Hartwick's search for answers to the vigilantes' pursuit of their next Most Wanted victims, the story unfolds using numerous characters and many different points of view, racing toward unexpected revelations and a terrifyingly imaginative climax.

While Hartwick is Nine's central protagonist, Logan is its most compelling character. We root for the healing of his damaged psyche and observe with interest his relationship with a young female runaway he has taken under his wing, as well as his tentative romance with another woman. The flashbacks to young Kit's abuse are chilling, making his recovery even more remarkable. Like most Burke villains, the vigilante ringleader is truly evil and completely amoral, but all of the other characters in Nine are multidimensional and understandable, despite their atrocities. Suspenseful and original, this is a non-formulaic thriller that weaves a complicated plot and satisfyingly ties everything together in a story of survival, justice, and redemption. Clare Martin

A gang of incredibly wealthy ruffians chases after less wealthy knaves to eliminate the FBI's 10 most wanted and a few extras on the side. What the ruffians are doing is illegal, but they're ridding the country of some of its worst criminals without costing taxpayers a dime. If there weren't a lot of self-indulgent sadism about the enterprise, they might deserve the high regard in which fellow Americans come to hold them. — Eugen Weber

The Los Angeles Times

Award-winning mystery author Burke (Flight; Sweet Dreams, Irene) takes a break from her Irene Kelly series to test the waters of stand-alone mainstream thrillers, and proves she can swim with the sharks in this tale of vigilante justice. The members of Project Nine, an exclusive club of deranged boys, create havoc for homicide detective Alex Brandon, the L.A. Sheriff's Department and the FBI, since their gruesome project involves eliminating the outlaws on the FBI's Most Wanted List. Brandon has a dark family history, to say the least, and grimly tolerates his partner, Ciara Morton, a good detective with a bad attitude. The leader of Project Nine, Everett Corey, began assembling his task force including Cameron Burgess, Morgan Addison and the delightfully vain Frederick Whitfield IV at Sedgewick, a rich kids' reform school in Malibu. The team's hero, haunted genius Kit Logan, whose nightmarish past includes the killing of his stepfather, serial killer Jerome Naughton, attended the same school. Ninth on the Project's list of targets is yet another Malibu alum: Kit's friend Gabe Taggert, whose involvement in a botched robbery/ homicide has driven him into hiding. Gabe's sister Meghan has history with both Everett and Kit, further complicating the mix. Brandon was involved with the Naughton case 10 years earlier and has dealt with some of the Sedgewick boys; while this makes him uniquely suited to solving the case, it also puts him at risk. Burke does an excellent job with her diverse, bustling cast which includes Spooky, a 13-year-old firebrand in Kit's care, and Chase, Brandon's troubled nephew providing plenty of background without short-changing the absorbing and inventive plot. Agent, Philip G. Spitzer. 13-city author tour. (Nov. 6) Copyright 2002 Cahners Business Information.

Publishers Weekly

LAPD homicide detective Alex Hartwick finds himself at odds with the feds when criminals on the FBI's Most Wanted list start dropping like flies in his jurisdiction. From an Edgar Award winner. Copyright 2002 Cahners Business Information.

Library Journal

Although the public cheers on the vigilantes who have splashily eliminated several of the miscreants on the FBI’s Ten Most Wanted list, Alex Brandon, a homicide detective with the LA Sheriff’s Department, isn’t quite so comfortable with their efforts. Murder, after all, is murder, even if the victims deserved to die. To compound the problem, the FBI is bickering with the LASD over who has jurisdiction; Brandon’s cantankerous law-and-order partner Ciara Morton continues to antagonize cops and suspects alike; and someone is leaking information to the vigilantes that gives a new edge to the term Most Wanted, getting the free-lancers to the alleged perps before the cops arrive. Soon the only one left on the FBI list is not-quite-so-bad-guy Gabe Taggert, who’s hiding out somewhere while his sister Meghan, his old buddy Kit Logan, Brandon, and the bloodthirsty vigilantes all compete to find him. The chase leads to the Sedgewick School for problem kids, where the bell tower has been rigged with explosives and the real targets of the vigilantes, Kit and Brandon in all their gore-soaked pasts, ultimately confront their demons. Burke (see above), who’s considerably less sanguinary in her Irene Kelly series (Flight, 2001, etc.), trowels on the torture, sexual depravities, and child abuse. In between Grand Guignol moments, Brandon, his uncle, his nephew, and a scruffy pooch develop some interesting relationships.

Kirkus Reviews

People A deviant, often bloody dash through the killing fields of Burke's richly imagined Los Angeles.

Sun-Sentinel (Ft. Lauderdale, FL) Enthralling.

The Orlando Sentinel (FL) Nine is a perfect 10.

From the Publisher