A Killing Night

From Publishers Weekly
In his fourth outing (after 2004's Shadow Men), King's pensive hero, Florida PI Max Freeman, spends more time tooling around Fort Lauderdale and his native Philadelphia than in his beloved Everglades. Max is protecting a dozen immigrant cruise ship employees, who were injured in a boiler explosion, while his pal, attorney Billy Manchester, tries to exact additional compensation for them from the ship's owners. Then Fort Lauderdale police detective Sherry Richards, a former lover and colleague, asks Max's help in tracking down Philadelphia ex-cop Colin O'Shea, whom Sherry suspects killed three pretty female bartenders. Max takes on the job, though he doubts O'Shea, with whom he once worked, is the guilty party. King skillfully alternates between the search for the murderer on the one hand and Max's attempts to guard the ship employees on the other. Max returns to Philadelphia, where he learns more about O'Shea and allays some of his personal demons. Though King's basic plots aren't particularly original, his smooth pacing, which creates tension, vivid place descriptions (for instance, a haunting search through a swamp) and insight into human behavior make this series a welcome addition to the Florida PI subgenre. Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

From Booklist
Someone is killing the women bartenders of Broward County, Florida. Max Freeman, a former Philadelphia cop, is lured by his ex-lover, detective Sherry Richards, into helping with the investigation. In the first three novels in King's award-winning series, Freeman was lying low in a stilt shack in the Everglades, trying to put his life back together. Now he is living in a more conventional beach cottage, but he seems to be asking for trouble. The case is rife with conflicts: he must work with a woman who trampled his barely mended heart, and the leading suspect is one of his former cop buddies. The earlier installments of King's adventures--The Blue Edge of Midnight (2002), A Visible Darkness (2003), and Shadow Men (2004)--were masterpieces of atmosphere and characterization. This one has lost a huge chunk of atmospheric appeal with the hero's move to the cottage (can't hold a candle to the shack in the middle of the Everglades), but Freeman's character is still quirky and complicated, and the plotting remains -eerily precise. Connie Fletcher
Copyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved

Booklist
Haunting and evocative... [Max Freeman] may be the most thoughtful, well-read, and multi-layered private eye hero since Spenser.

The Independent
Just about as perfect as a crime novel can be.

Book Description
Max Freeman is at a crossroads. No longer content to live solely in his remote shack in the Everglades, he is looking to move beyond his self-imposed isolation. So when his onetime girlfriend, Detective Sherry Richards, asks for his help as a private investigator in nailing an ex-cop she suspects of killing several young women in South Florida, Max is ready to help her see justice done. But there’s a problem. Sherry’s suspect is a former police officer from Philadelphia who served with Max—a brother-in-blue who once saved Max’s life. Matters are made worse when Max’s own aggressive investigation leads him to believe that Sherry’s crusade to protect these women is about to roll over a possibly innocent man. Caught between his loyalty to Sherry and his debt to his fellow ex-cop, Max’s search for the truth will take him back to the streets of Philadelphia, where he will dig into his fellow officer’s troubled past . . . only to come face-to-face with his own. And while Max continues his quest, a controlling, cunning killer inexorably closes in on what could be his next victim. . . .

About the Author
Jonathon King is a former journalist and the author of three previous critically acclaimed, award-winning novels. His debut, The Blue Edge of Midnight, won the Edgar Award for Best First Novel and was a Los Angeles Times bestseller.


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A phone call from an ex-lover cop asking for help in catching a rogue policeman leads Philadelpha cop-turned-Everglades private investigator Max Freemen on a trail back to Philadelphia and repressed memories and then back to Florida and murderous confusion. King, a veteran journalist in both Philadelphia and Florida, is a skilled plotter and creator of sharply delineated characters. He moves easily from gritty street scenes to lyric descriptions of swamp and seacoast. Max, too, moves from the angst of the earlier books (e.g., Shadow Men) to an increased engagement with the world. That this world is full of crooks and danger is, in King's hands, vividly realized. Recommended for most crime fiction collections.-Roland Person, emeritus, Southern Illinois Univ. Lib., Carbondale Copyright 2005 Reed Business Information.


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