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- Night Crimes
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- Author: Judith Woolcock Colombo
- Reviewer: Rita Porter
- Publisher: PublishAmerica, Baltimore
- Format: Adult, Fiction, Paperback, 322 pages, 2001, $19.95
- ISBN: 158851174X
- Rating: * * Quills
- www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/asin/158851174X/scriquil
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- Someone is stalking Lara Bello. She can feel someone following her, though she can't see the person. Her husband Tony can't figure out why someone would want to follow an art teacher; it's not like she is famous or rich. Tony plays down the seriousness of it to Lara, who thinks, at first, that this is the sane way to handle her overactive imagination, until events start unfolding that make it harder and harder to deny being stalked by a madman. Mysterious cards show up in her purse, someone replaces her purse at the end of one of her classes but gets away before anyone can say or do anything. Lara is getting scared now.
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- Tony is caught up in a major case at the police precinct he works, because someone is going around killing homeless people. The papers have dubbed the killer as the Angel of Mercy, one who gives his victims a decent last meal and an apparent drink mixed with drugs. At first, Tony is the one investigating these deaths, for they are found on his shift and on his route. The Angel of Mercy begins calling in the location of his victims, but reports only to Tony, creating problems for Tony with his superiors within police ranks.
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- With all that has happened to spook both Lara and Tony, not to mention their kids, they decide that Lara and the kids will take an early Thanksgiving vacation to their cabin outside the city, with Tony joining them the day before Thanksgiving. Tony hires a PI to start looking for the stalker and hopes to put an end to it. A few days later, he receives word that the man they are seeking is arrested. However, when an attack on Lara proves that their assumptions are wrong, Lara starts piecing together the facts and comes up with clues as to the true identity of her stalker.
- Fear, stalking, murder and general chaos holds reign in Night Crimes. The overtones of having a stalker, brings a touch of reality into the book. With the switching between two different stories that come together then go apart again, each ending standing on its own, the novel gives the reader a two for one mystery book.
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- The characters are not strong on their own, making it necessary for them to complement each other. However, pulling them together as a unit means that there aren't any main characters, just a whole cast of them combined into a family. On the whole, they are written well, and when combined with the different plots, the book works well.
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- Overall, it is a decent read, not overly attention getting, but well written.
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