The Darker Side-Cody McFadyen

The Darker Side
Cody McFadyen
Bantam, Oct 2008, $24.00
ISBN 9780553806946

The Director of the FBI orders Los Angeles based agent Smoky Barrett to come to Washington, D.C. to work on the case of a young woman stabbed to death while flying on an airplane. Smoky has no idea why her boss wants her to look at the corpse and get involved in this case that is across the continent, but heads east immediately.

Smoky is stunned to learn the victim is daughter of a US senator and that Lisa Reid was undergoing a transsexual procedural. She and her team find clues that lead to a psychopath they call “Preacher”, a serial killer who murders his victims to obtain their innermost darkest sins. The Fed knows that her predator will challenge her to steal her darkest secrets if she does not stop the culprit first.

In her third FBI police procedural (see THE FACE OF DEATH and SHADOWMAN), Smoky is superb as she and readers expect her to be the rodent in a cat and mouse game with a killer who “steals” secrets from those victimized. Although the passages relaying each victim’s deepest darkest secrets are fascinating they seem more like cul de sacs rather than feeding the main story line. Still sub-genre fans will enjoy this psychological thriller that digs deep into THE DARKER SIDE of people.

Harriet Klausner