i think i'm being generous. i think this book could easily get two stars and it would be okay. yet i loved it for long stretches, and got turned off only towards the end. still, endings count. in the mystery genre, a book that weaves a very complex web but lets you down at the end is a seriously flawed book.this started losing me when the intricacies of the plot became so intricate that i started losing the ability to suspend disbelief. also, o'connell plays with red herrings and misleading/confusing side-plots a bit too close to the fire. i got burned. for most of the book, though, i shamelessly rooted for mallory. she has the potential to be a very good character. maybe the previous books of the series show her in a less preposterous light. maybe future books will. i have read neither. now i'll talk about the mystification and de-mystification of the female loner. literature, high and low-brow, has male loners galore, but the other characters don't spend quite as much time worshiping them at a distance, tiptoeing around them, discussing them, analysing them, worrying about them. above all, they don't call them "the kid." male loners are cool. this female loner is cool, too -- definitely portrayed as such -- but for some reason o'connell felt the need to endow her friends with an insistent, sticky brand of avuncularism that, at the end, does get on one's nerves. leave well enough alone, already. the woman on the pedestal is a mainstay of heroic representations of women since homer, and plenty people have made the argument that it actually diminishes women. i am not telling o'connell to get with the program, but i'm telling you that it would help a lot with my enjoyment of her books if she did.maybe carol o'connell is not too worried about the diminishment of her character, though. and here's another observation. i am no mystery expert, but my tiny exposure to the genre has led me to observe that women writers love to put their female characters in situations in which women and or children get massively brutalized. i understand the exorcising function of this fantasy, the drive to turn terror into pleasure. it's primal and common and i buy it. and maybe male writers do it too, and maybe only the three or so women mystery writers i have read do it. ** SPOILERS **having covered my bases, though, i'd like to say that in this 21st century of ours it might be nice for women writers to move on from this specific exorcising fantasy and be a little less transparent in their desire to come to terms with violence against women and children. i mean, do you HAVE to get ONE HUNDRED LITTLE GIRLS brutally slaughtered?the small mercy, here, is that there is no sexual violence. the annoying fact is that the killer must be über-phobic of touch with a live human being in order for this fact to be supported by the narrative. i get frustrated by the way in which this culture of ours thrives on the brutalization of children. i know we are all terrified. i know we are battling powerful frontier fantasies of treacherous enemies and the great unknown. i also know that the strongly religious fundamentalist roots of our cultural, with their accompanying demonization of sexuality, make us angry and repressed. but, com'on. it's the 21st century. it's okay to lay the beast to rest. it's okay to walk close to it and realize that it isn't that bad after all. it's okay to let our kids walk to the grocery store on their own, play in the front yard unsupervised, grow up a little less frightened.
O’ Connell has set herself apart as one of the finest psychological crime writers ever.‘Love is the death of me.’Detective Riker reads the suicide note found next to Savannah’s corpse. The gunshot victim is lying in his partner, Detective Kathy Mallory’s apartment.Is it a suicide or a homicide? Mallory has disappeared.If you aren’t acquainted with Kathy Mallory, do yourself a favour and change that. There has never been a character like her in crime fiction.Mallory is the most beautiful, most heartless, most terrifying heroine you’ll ever meet.Until the final page of Mallory’s last outing, Winter House, and now in Shark Music, O’ Connell used the enigmatic third person viewpoint. She turned us into intruders who watched Mallory. Mesmerised voyeurs, we never knew what she thought or what she felt.Did Mallory, in fact, feel?In Shark Music, we enter her mind, and the torment and tension of being there is almost unbearable.Far away from New York, the corpse of a man lies on Route 66. This road has become a burial ground for a number of bodies – all of little girls, aged between five and seven.Mallory’s mother died when she was six. She never knew her father. She became a street child marked by cold truths and ruinous logic. Her chilling manipulation of technology boggles the brain. She is literally the ghost in the machine.Why then has she left a paper trail for Riker to follow?He knows that she filled her car with fuel in Pennsylvania and Ohio. She follows the eerie caravan of parents searching for lost children, led by the enigmatic Dr Magritte. She finds items belongings to her lost father. She looks at photographs of him and sees the electric green eyes that belong to her.This complex novel rips apart the hopes and despairs of lost parents and lost children. It enters the place that no human being wants to go. Ever.And you know, as you read, that it can only end in tears. And still you read.From the mystery and malice of Mallory’s Oracle to the brain numbing fear in Flight of the Stone Angel, O’ Connell has set herself apart as the finest psychological crime writer ever.Shark Music surpasses all that has gone before. It is a masterpiece.Amanda PattersonRating: 5/5
Do You like book Find Me (2006)?
I truly appreciate receiving this complimentary copy from Goodreads First Reads of Find Me by Carol O'Connell. This was the first book I've read in this series. Because I had not read books earlier in the series, I found myself somewhat confused at times as I tried to keep up with the many different characters. I often had to reread to better follow the story. What twists and turns the reader takes as one joins Mallory on her journey along old Route 66, which is the route that her father took many, many years before. Skeletons of children, a huge caravan of parents looking for lost children, FBI participants - These are just a few of the twists and turns one encounters on Route 66 while looking for a killer. This book is quite intense, and I found myself having to put it down after every 1 or 2 chapters to try to digest what was happening. Find Me was definitely an interesting read, quite different than other mysteries I have read.
—Betty
I am really bored with the trope in mystery/thriller of the damaged savant detective. This was the first Kathy Mallory I've read, and it'll be the last. Mallory is that damaged savant, and beautiful (she's described as possessing a "perfect" face, whatever that means), and she is so out of control that no respectable police force would hire her, promote her to detective, or put up with her. But she's nuthin to the FBI agent who is the true villain of the piece. Oh, puleez.The authorial manipulations of the reader are interesting at first, but the inability of any of these 2-D characters to talk to one another just makes the device more and more and more tiresome. Don't bother.
—Mackay
I don't know which Mallory book this is and I have read several of them. This one is a good, solid read with a rather ambiguous endingKathy Mallory is truly a fascinating character and following her evolution over several novels is quite interesting. One of these days she may graduate to real humanity.The old Mother Road - Route 66 - is as much a character as it is the setting of this book. O'Connell pays nostalgic tribute to the past in following the old road, where it still exists. This was traveling before the interstate highway system. Of course, it's also the scene of the crime asdozens of children's graves are found at intervals along the old road. The caravan of parents she alternately herds and deserts forces Mallory to interact with more everyday folks than is congenial for her.Mallory, normally the most single-minded of detectives, must split her attention between the evolving murder case and her own personal journey following the letters from her father down his beloved highway. As usual, she has her partner Riker and friend Charles Butler to trail her, support her, and pick up the pieces behind her. They also stand ready to pick up the pieces of Mallory if she falls/fails at either task.
—Katherine
