"Excellent Eve Duncan tale"

Usually Joe wants Eve to ease up on her workload as a forensic sculptor but this time he is pushing her to work as fast as she can. She understands when the sculpture is the face of Jane their adopted daughter. It seems that a serial killer is murdering women who look like Jane, thinking they are Cira, a woman who died in Herculaneum when Mt. Vesuvius blew. Coincidentally, Jane dreams of being Cira and fighting to get out of Herculaneum through the tunnels aided by her ex-lover Antonio.

Mark Trevor uses guiles and lies to ingratiate him into the search for Aldo because he has a score to settle with the man. Aldo has targeted Jane as his next victim believing he has finally found the reincarnation of Cira. Her policeman father Joe, Eve and Trevor bait a trap that will hopefully bring Aldo out in the open so he can be captured if he doesn't kill them first.

Some of Iris Johansen's best books feature Eve Duncan and company and Blind Alley is no exception. This exciting action thriller involves Jane who is older than her seventeen years and the feeling that springs up between her and Trevor are appropriate because Trevor doesn't act on them. Although nothing can come of it because she is too young, she is determined when the time is right they will be together. This suspense laden thriller features many of the characters readers have come to care for in the Eve Duncan series as this exciting and powerful work propels fans to want to read more of the fabulous works of Ms. Johansen.

Harriet Klausner

Reviewed by Harriet Klausner
Posted August 16, 2004

Summary

The New York Times bestselling author of Firestorm, Iris Johansen, returns with a psychological thriller so terrifying, so relentlessly paced, it won't leave you time to catch your breath before the next shock comes. A forensic sculptor is locked in a deadly duel with a serial killer determined to destroy her—one life at a time. Eve Duncan's job is to put a face on the faceless victims of violent crimes. Her work not only comforts their survivors—but helps catch their killers. But there is another, more personal reason that Eve Duncan is driven to do the kind of work she does—a dark nightmare from a past she can never bury. And as she works on the skull of a newly discovered victim, that past is about to return all over again. The victim is a Jane Doe found murdered, her face erased beyond recognition. But whoever killed her wasn't just trying to hide her identity. The plan was far more horrifying. For as the face forms under Eve's skilled hands, she is about to get the shock of her life. The victim is someone she knows all too well. Someone who isn't dead. Yet. Instantly Eve's peaceful life is shattered. The sanctuary of the lakeside cottage she shares with Atlanta detective Joe Quinn and their adopted daughter Jane has been invaded by a killer who's sent the grimmest of threats: the face of his next victim. To stop him, Eve must put her own life in the balance and question everything and everyone she trusts. Not even Quinn can go where Eve must go this time. As the trail of faceless bodies leads to a chilling revelation, Eve finds herself trying to catch a master murderer whose grisly work is a testament to a mind warped by perversion and revenge. Now she must pit her skills against his in a showdown where the stakes are life itself— and where the unbearable cost of failure will make Eve's own murder seem like a mercy killing.