Perish

by Lisa Black

Overview

Bestselling author Lisa Black takes readers on a nailbiting journey to the dark side of justice as forensic expert Maggie Gardiner discovers troubling new details about her colleague Jack Renner, a homicide detective with a brutal approach to law and order . . .
 
The scene of the crime is lavish but gruesome. In a luxurious mansion on the outskirts of Cleveland, a woman’s body lies gutted in a pool of blood on the marble floor. The victim is Joanna Moorehouse, founder of Sterling Financial. The killer could be any one of her associates.
 
Maggie knows that to crack the case, she and Jack will have to infiltrate the cutthroat world of high-stakes finance. But the offices of Sterling Financial seethe with potential suspects, every employee hellbent on making a killing. When another officer uncovers disturbing evidence in a series of unrelated murders, the investigation takes a surprising detour.
 
Only Maggie recognizes the blood-soaked handiwork of  a killer who has committed the most heinous of crimes—and will continue killing until he is stopped. Burdened with unbearable secrets, Maggie must make an agonizing choice, while her conscience keeps telling her: she’s next.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781683247050
Publisher:	Center Point Pub
Publication date:	03/01/2018
Edition description:	Large Print
Product dimensions:	6.50(w) x 1.50(h) x 9.50(d)

About the Author

New York Times bestselling author Lisa Black introduced the characters of Maggie Gardiner and Jack Renner in her acclaimed suspense novel That Darkness and continued their story in Unpunished.  She is the author of seven novels in the Theresa MacLean mystery series and two novels written as Elizabeth Becka. As a forensic scientist at the Cuyahoga County Coroner’s Office, she analyzed gunshot residue on hands and clothing, hairs, fibers, paint, glass, DNA, blood and many other forms of trace evidence, as well as crime scenes. Now she is a latent print examiner and CSI for the Cape Coral Police Department in Florida, working mostly with fingerprints and crime scenes.
 
Lisa is a member of the American Academy of Forensic Scientists, the International Association for Identification, the International Association of Bloodstain Pattern Analysts and is a Certified Latent Print Examiner. She has testified in court as an expert witness over sixty-five times. Her books have been translated into six languages. She lives near Fort Myers, Florida. Visit her on Facebook, Twitter, or at www.lisa-black.com.

Editorial Reviews

12/04/2017
In bestseller Black’s uneven third thriller to feature Cleveland forensic investigator Maggie Gardiner (after 2017’s Unpunished), Maggie is horrified to see 28-year-old Joanna Moorehouse, the owner of mortgage banking firm Sterling Financial, lying gutted in the living room of her spotless home, but the most surprising aspect about the murder is the lack of evidence at the crime scene. Maggie’s got a tough job ahead of her, and Joanna’s employees at Sterling aren’t exactly the most forthcoming. Maggie’s colleagues, detectives Jack Renner and Thomas Riley, begin digging into Sterling, and a pattern of corruption emerges. Another, identical killing kicks the case into overdrive. Meanwhile, Maggie is struggling with a dark secret involving Jack, one that ex-husband Rick, a cop, may soon uncover. Black packs the formulaic plot full of fascinating forensic science and an eye-opening deep dive into predatory mortgage-lending practices. But after such an extensive buildup, the pedestrian denouement comes as a disappointment. Agent: Vicky Bijur, Vicky Bijur Agency. (Feb.)

Publishers Weekly

A solid position in suspense, a solid backbone of detection.”
—Kirkus Reviews
 
“As always with Black, this psychological suspense is incredible. And her way of describing the financial world makes you want to run out, take any money you have invested, cash it in and place it under your pillow instead.”
—Suspense Magazine

From the Publisher

2017-10-24
A forensic expert tries to make sense of a grisly string of murders.Joanna Moorehouse was living the life. Already, in her late 20s, she was CEO of Sterling Financial, a large mortgage company. Her job rained down perks, including a luxurious home in the Cleveland suburbs. Who could have hated her so much that he or she wanted her not only dead, but literally hacked to ribbons on the floor of her pristine dining room? Maggie Gardiner (Unpunished, 2017, etc.) hopes to cull enough evidence from the scene to give a firmer direction to detectives Jack Renner and Thomas Riley's investigation. What interests Maggie most is not what she finds but what she doesn't find: no blood trail, no fingerprints, no trace of the killer's movements walking away from the scene of his own carnage. As Renner and Riley seek motives for the killing among the Sterling staff, including Jeremy Mearan, an employee whose benefits package included access to Moorehouse's bedroom, Maggie puzzles over the trace evidence. But it isn't until more corpses crop up, similarly slashed and with similarly sterile crime scenes, that Maggie, Renner, and Riley realize that the murder isn't just about Joanna. Black offers readers a crash course in subprime lending and credit default swaps along with a strong position in suspense. The good guys don't all finish first, but in the end, justice is done.Like her Theresa MacLean series, Black's Gardiner and Renner investigations graft a quirky social justice sensibility onto a solid backbone of detection.

Kirkus Reviews