Strong Darkness: A Caitlin Strong Novel
Jon Land
Forge, Sep 30 2014, $26.95
ISBN 9780765335111
After confronting religious fanatics with a bulldozer at a funeral
for a fallen warrior, Texas Ranger Caitlin Strong and her boyfriend Cort Wesley Masters are in Providence where his son
Dylan Torres lies in a hospital in an induced coma due after suffering a blunt
force trauma. PPD Detective Finneran
leads the inquiry, but objects to Caitlin’s involvement having dealt with her
previous visit to Brown University (see Strong Rain Falling). At about the
same time, San Antonio College Professor Guillermo Paz envisions Strong needs
him. As Masters and Strong investigate
the assault, they find a link to Chinese businessman Li Zhen managing the
construction of a new 5G network in Texas and missing hooker Kai whose clues to
her whereabouts are corpses. Strong
heads home where Paz joins her to look into Li’s empire and Masters goes to New
York following a lead re his son’s attack.
In 1883, Caitlin’s great-grandfather Texas Ranger William Ray Strong and Judge Roy Bean find evidence of
a different type of killer than any either has seen before. They follow the murdered bodies alongside of
the railroad tracks in an effort to end a serial killer’s relentless slaughter. Ironically William’s case and that of his
great-granddaughter mirror each other; as the twenty-first century psychopath’s
M.O. apparently copies that of the nineteenth century maniac.
The sixth Caitlin Strong Texas Ranger thriller (see Strong Vengeance
and Strong at the Break) is a fantastic police procedural that grips the reader
whether it is 1883 or the present. The
key to this exhilarating entry is Jon Land’s ability to effortlessly switch
between the three subplots; which makes for a fabulous fast-paced mystery.
Harriet Klausner
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