Thin Dark Line

ANNOTATION

. The bestselling author of Night Sins and Guilty as Sin takes readers on a search for the truth through the bayous of Louisiana that reaches deep into the dark recesses of the heart. Deputy Annie Broussard is drawn into a dangerous, deadly game when she pursues the investigation of a killer whose case has been dismissed on a technicality.

FROM THE PUBLISHER

Pamela Bichon's killer is free, the case against him dismissed on a technicality. In the eyes of the law it doesn't matter that the prosecutor's key piece of evidence proves Marcus Renard's guilt beyond a shadow of a doubt. All that matters is that the evidence was never listed on a search warrant and it was seized by a detective with a questionable past and a nasty reputation. But the investigation isn't over - not for Cajun cop Nick Fourcade, who stands accused of planting the evidence. He's stepped over the line before and this case could push him over the edge. Deputy Annie Broussard can't walk away from the homicide either. She found the body. But pursuing the investigation will mean forming an uneasy alliance with Fourcade, a man she doesn't trust. It will mean subjecting herself to growing harassment from her fellow cops. And it will mean letting herself be drawn into the confidence of a suspected killer.

FROM THE CRITICS

Publishers Weekly

Having begun her career as a romance author for Bantam's Loveswept line, Hoag has evolved into a fine thriller writer. Night Sins, set in rural Minnesota, was her entry into romantic suspense, and her palette became a lot darker when the protagonists reappeared in Guilty as Sin. This latest thriller wastes no time; it's creepy from the prologue, a tortured poem written by the murderer, which both establishes the tone and cleverly sets up the ending. A morass of obsessive love, brutality and planted evidence swirl around Annie Broussard, a pint-sized, by-the-book female deputy working in the sheriff's department of Louisiana's Partout Parish. Everyone in the parish--citizens, cops and rogue detective Nick Fourcad--believes architect Marcus Renard, the man acquitted of torturing and killing 37-year-old realtor Pam Bichon, is guilty. When Annie arrests Nick while he's in the process of beating Marcus to death, she finds herself ostracized by her fellow cops and the townsfolk. Afterwards, both she and Nick are put on suspension and must join forces to uncover the truth about Pam's death. Hoag displays a firm grasp on localeDhere, it's the eccentricities and colorful slang of the Louisiana Bayou country. This isn't exactly a mystery--the reader doesn't have to work too hard to figure out who really did it, although the police don't until the final confrontation--but there's plenty of suspense in waiting to see how it will all be resolved. Psychopathic villains are common enough, but Hoag has managed to endow hers with a scarred entourage that provides a tragic note.

Library Journal

In this latest from Hoag, who hit it big with Night Sins (LJ 1/95), a female cop teams with a notoriously ill-tempered male detective in hopes of trapping a vicious killer.

Kirkus Reviews

Hoag finishes her crossover from sexy soft-cover romance to psychosexual thriller with this tale of tough Cajun loners looking for love in unlikely places.

Heroine Annie Broussard is a deputy with the sheriff's office in Partout Parish in southern Louisiana. An orphan who's working hard to make detective, she's also devoted to getting rid of the sexual predators who victimize women. But just as her career seems to be looking up, Annie breaks an unwritten police law: She arrests a fellow officer, Nick Fourcade, when she finds him beating up a murder suspect. Annie should have let Fourcade kill him, say both her colleagues and the bayou parish citizens. After all, the suspect, Marcus Renard, had supposedly stalked Pam Bichon, a single mother. He'd driven stakes through her hands, raped her, killed her, eviscerated her, then left her wearing only a feathered Mardi Gras mask in a deserted cottage on Pony Bayou. Why not kill him? Switching his obsession from Pam to Annie, he maintains that he's innocent and begs Annie to help him. Working with Fourcade, who's suspended but still obsessed with the case, she seeks evidence to put the troubled Marcus legally behind bars. Meanwhile, someone's raping Louisiana women, and Marcus is too injured to be the perp. Is it Annie's lazy, mean-spirited colleague Stokes? Or Pam's husband, involved with a New Orleans racketeer from Fourcade's past? As Mardi Gras approaches, Annie, a cute kid who does 50 chin-ups a day and has an addiction to candy bars, wrestles with Fourcade's dangerous sexuality—fortunately a losing battle—and with the evil presence of deranged male predators that haunts so many recent suspense novels.

Hoag (Guilty as Sin, 1996, etc.) is always a good gritty read, but this time a lack of sustained emotional tension makes the novel a long ride on soft tires.