"A potent romantic suspense"

In Avon County, Pennsylvania, Homicide Detective Evan Crosby is sick when he sees the fourth victim in under a month. Each casualty was pretty young female, ages 12 -- 14, attending a private school, and left without shoes. His lover, FBI profiler Annie Marie McCall tries to give him solace, but knows how difficult coping with this case is.

At the wedding of Annie's sister to a Shield sibling, Evan feels left out as the happy occasion is more a wake to FBI Agent Thomas Shield, who was assassinated. Upset, Evan leaves when another girl is killed without a word to Annie who is inside the Shield zone since Thomas was her fiancé, which bans the detective from entry. Not long afterward, knowing she needs closure, Evan offers a fresh pair of eyes in investigating the murder. As they work together on the Shield murder and the serial killings, an agency insider watches them very closely because he will have them eliminated if they get to close to him or his young girl black market ring.

The fourth Dead tale is a potent romantic suspense tale starring two likable protagonists in love yet struggling to form a relationship because of the ghost of her murdered fiancé. The Shield Zone is tighter than ever, denser than a black hole as no matter escapes this closely knit family to the chagrin of Evan. Annie is terrific as she balances her second strike of love's lightning bolt with her first hit, but still needs closure, which Evan knows means uncovering who killed Thomas. Mariah Stewart is dead on with this tale and series.

Harriet Klausner

Reviewed by Harriet Klausner
Posted July 25, 2005

Bestselling author Mariah Stewart proved she can knock 'em dead when she delivered the resounding one-two-three punch of her suspense "trilogy"—Dead Wrong, Dead Certain, and Dead Even. Now, in her anticipated hardcover debut, she's back to finish off this stunning series with her hottest shot yet.

Summary

Two years ago, a major FBI undercover drug deal suddenly went south—and special agent Dylan Shields went down in a hail of bullets. When the dust cleared, his fellow agent (and fiance) Anne Marie McCall was left alone with too many unanswered questions and nothing to do but hit the job as hard as she could to dull the pain. Only now is she beginning to ease up on her punishing routine as a Bureau profiler and starting to let some light in again. Detective Evan Crosby had a lot to do with drawing Annie back into life, and she's not about to let her chance at happiness with him slip away.

But before she can embrace a bright new future, she must grapple with the dangerous past whose demons of doubt and suspicion won't let her sleep at night . . . and whose dead will never rest in peace until justice is served. That means going places where someone doesn't want Annie to be and maneuvering a minefield of dirty tricks and deadly threats, in order to make a cold case hot enough to get the right people sweating. The harder Annie squeezes, the more blood, lies, and betrayal she wrings out . . . and the closer she comes to connecting a face to the trigger finger that blew away her dreams—and Dylan Shields. What she doesn't know is that the killer she's closing in on is looking for closure too. The kind that only Annie's death can bring.