Monday, September 19, 2011

Half-Passed Dawn-Richard Doetsch

Half-Passed Dawn


Richard Doetsch

Atria, Sep 27 2011, $25.00

ISBN: 9781439183977



Manhattan District Attorney Jack Keeler wakes up with no memory of what happened last night. He notices the stiches binding a wound in his shoulder that he has no idea how he got it and looks in a mirror to see a cut over his eye. Confused and frightened, Jack also notices a tattoo on his entire forearm in an apparently a foreign alphabet. In a state of panic, he calls out to his beloved wife Mia the FBI agent and their two young daughters Hope and Sara but no one responds.



He notices newspaper headlines: “New York City District Attorney Jack Keeler Dead” as his car fell off the Rider Bridge. Mia is dead too. Jack calls his friend retired Frank Archer who is stunned as he read the paper. Frank rushes over, but an intruder enters Jack’s home. They tackle him as he is about to leave with the Keeler file and two teddy bears belonging to Hope and Sara. As Frank and Jack work on reconstructing what happened, the beleaguered D.A. realizes Mia lives but was abducted. He begins a quest to save his Mia, but the answers lie in a maximum security prison and a diary that allegedly predicts the future.



Author of The 13th Hour, Richard Doetsch provides a fascinating taut twister filled with numerous spins including one unexpected final climatic shocker. The story line starts with the stunning eye opener and never decelerates as a desperate Jack will do anything to save his beloved three females. Half-Passed Dawn is a superb character driven suspense tale as readers anticipate a showdown between the frantic protagonist and his apparently Oedipus Complex adversary who will kill anyone to achieve his goal; but nothing is quite like it seems.



Harriet Klausner



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