This is the sixth book in Cain’s series starring the Portland detective Archie Sheridan, who throughout has been tormented by the serial murderer Gretchen Lowell, known as the Beauty Killer. Early in the series, Gretchen beguiled Archie, destroyed his marriage and then, just for fun, removed his spleen and hammered nails into his chest, while honing her reputation as a psychopathically savage butcher. (In one instance, she decapitated a librarian, left the body in a car and returned the head to the library a week later with a note apologizing that it was overdue.)

Portland serves somewhat anachronistically as the hipster backdrop to these grisly killings, and Cain faithfully goes through the crime-lit checklist: the informant, the detective with his all-too-human foibles, the helpful strippers.

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By Bill Ott - It figures that nonpareil serial killer Gretchen Lowell, on the loose since Kill You Twice (2012), would pick Halloween for a return trip to Portland, Oregon. After all, with all those revelers adorned in Beauty Killer masks, blond wigs, and red lipstick, no one will be able to tell the real Gretchen from the imitations. Except police detective Archie Sheridan, of course, on whose battered body Gretchen has done some of her best work, and who still can’t get Gretchen out of both his nightmares and sexual fantasies. But Archie has a lot on his mind. A DEA agent has been murdered, and it looks like the long-running sting operation aimed at a local drug lord may be in jeopardy. Hoping to learn more, Archie crashes the drug lord’s Halloween costume party, where he gets a late-night visit from Gretchen (or was that part just a fantasy?). Slowly Archie realizes that Gretchen has been stage-managing much of his recent life from afar, all leading up to a series of birthday surprises that put Archie’s pal, punky reporter Susan Ward, in grave danger. But here’s the thing: Cain knows she needs to keep playing with the dynamic between Gretchen and Archie—and even with our view of Gretchen—if this series is going to stay both fresh and exciting, and she always finds new ways to do it... 

For full review, go here. 

Despite being locked away in the Oregon State Hospital, serial killer Gretchen Lowell still looms large in Det. Archie Sheridan’s life in bestseller Cain’s utterly engrossing fifth thriller featuring the pair (after 2011’s The Night Season). When Gretchen claims that the Portland police detective’s two latest murder victims—one found flayed in a local park and another burned to a crisp atop the iconic city sign—are the work of killer Ryan Motley, Archie knows better than to take Gretchen at her word, but he’s intrigued when she mentions having a child, a new twist. Meanwhile, Susan Ward, now working as a freelance reporter, is following both the current murder case and the developing situation with Gretchen, going so far as to interview her at the state hospital, where Gretchen divulges tidbits of her early life, previously uncharted territory. That blood oozes off practically every page is never in doubt. But neither is Cain’s skill in creating riveting character drama between two damaged souls.150,000 first printing; author tour. Agent: Joy Harris, Joy Harris Literary Agency. (Aug.)

Inky Depths

By ZOË SLUTZKY

By now, Archie (and Cain’s loyal readers, of which there are many) knows the signs of a serial killer all too well. In “Heartsick” and its two sequels, Cain conjured Gretchen Lowell, a blue-eyed psychopath with an endless résumé of gory murders. Archie was Gretchen’s special victim, trapped and tortured after 10 years on her trail, and spared at the 11th hour in a twisted act of mercy. Back in jail, Gretchen has receded to the fringes of the narrative, but her lethal beauty haunts the detective. He fingers the heart-shaped scar she carved into his chest as if it has replaced his own.

The crimes in “The Night Season” are at once less plausible and less deliciously perverse than Gretchen’s drawn-out butcheries. As the hours creep by, the task force discovers the killer’s bizarre, ­aquarium-bound weapon. The motive is murkier. Susan Ward, The Oregon Herald’s neon-haired crime columnist, returns in a central role, shadowing Archie as he makes his sleepless way through the investigation. Despite his half-hearted attempts to shake her off, her dogged detective work proves crucial to the case. “You know how everyone has a tiny talent?” she asks him. “Like parallel parking? Or catching serial killers? Mine is Googling.” Irreverent, vulnerable and sharp, she is as shrewdly drawn as Archie and as interesting to watch. As in the past, she ends up in the thick of things, and the book’s high-octane ending hinges on her resolve.

Cain intercuts her quick-paced chapters, which spin each narrative strand with expert restraint, with brief moments in the murderer’s footsteps. In one early scene, Susan scours the park at night while the killer follows two paces behind, obscured by the darkness beyond her flashlight’s beam. “He could kill her. In a heartbeat,” he thinks. “He would not even break a sweat doing it.” These glimpses of psychosis are unsettling, but they never chill with the force of Gretchen’s ice-blue stare. Like Gretchen, this novel’s cephalopod-obsessed killer wants his victims to experience death — to know it intimately. But there is a motive to his derangement. Perhaps inevitably, Gretchen’s deadly machinations are more frightening for their wanton brand of evil.

Still, the world that Cain creates is as dark and ominous as ever. The novel’s greatest menace is the weather, which transforms Portland’s familiar topography into something less than welcoming. Flooded and obscured by rain, the city becomes wild, unknowable: “The thin wisps of trees lining the sidewalk shuddered, bare-leaved, in the wind. The whole world glistened wet and black, like the Pacific Ocean at night.” When the storm nearly levels its downtown, the sudden shifts in perspective are vertiginous, and thrilling. This is the mood that Cain has mastered: the dread of knowing something is off, but not being able to see it clearly. It is what presses her readers onward, pulses rising along with the waterline.