Nightlife

When a run-of-the-mill business man in Portland is shot to death in his bathtub, Police Detective Catherine Hobbs looks to the obvious - his mob connected cousin. But the doer looks like it's a pair of doers and one's a woman and that isn't making sense. Then other random killings start happening… There is almost no one who can create the brilliant and yet flawed characters that Thomas Perry can and, at the same time, put them in a story that has whiplash inducing twists and turns.

A young woman seduces and manipulates men and then kills them when they may discover that she's not who she says she is. And then she changes her identity when she moves on. The only FBI agent who believes these serial killings are being perpetrated by a woman is a woman. This was a fun read. The serial killer was determined to make the world conform to her beliefs. The way she practiced her facial expressions in the mirror to project the right emotions for the situations she manipulated and the way she alwasy thought of herself as the victim were both funny and creepy.

Audiobook. Thomas Perry delivers a fine novel about a chameleon-like woman who preys on men (just how deliberate her actions might be I will leave to other readers.) Perry presents the story from a variety of different points-of-view: the Portland detective sergeant looking for her; the gambling-addicted former D.A. office’s retired investigator, and Hugo Poole, the local crime boss’s, hired gun. The killing that started the manhunt and flight was that of Hugo Poole’s cousin and Poole wants to know if the killing might have been revenge for something he himself had done.

There are lots of similarities to Perry’s Jane Whitfield series. The woman, who adopts multiple identities--much too easily IMO ( it just can’t be that easy to show more create new drivers licenses, and having scanners and printers close at hand all the time also seemed a bit fortuitous) -- manages to stay several steps ahead of her pursuers. How she does it provides for an intriguing, excellent long-flight read or listen.

A minor complaint is that there is often extensive backstory to minor characters with only ten pages to live. show less

Nightlife takes us on a dangerous cat and mouse game that pits two women against each other, one a beautiful, highly manipulative serial killer, the other the detective who is determined to stop her.
This murderer changes her appearance and identity with every kill, moving from Portland to San Francisco, to LA, to Las Vegas, with Catherine Hobbs Portland homicide detective, always one step behind.
As Catherine follows the evidence she finds herself in a deadly contest with a murderer who kills on impulse and with ease, who becomes more efficient and elusive with every crime. Frequenting bars, preying on the "nightlife" that inhabits them, the killer knows how to pick the most malleable, prosperous, lonely guy out of a crowd.
Catherine show more must use everything she has as a woman as well as a detective to stop her. She must learn how to read the murderer's mind. And she is up against a killer who turns to stalking her.
"Delving" deep inside the female psyche, reinterpreting conventions and confounding expectations, this is Perry at his critically acclaimed best. show less

Perry is a great author. This is a standalone, about a female serial killer and the female detective after her.

Not as good as his other works

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