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Book Review of Dead Famous (Kathleen Mallory, Bk 7) (aka The Jury Must Die)

Dead Famous (Kathleen Mallory, Bk 7) (aka The Jury Must Die)
reviewed on + 67 more book reviews


This is a psychological thriller, and a curious one at that, but I recommend it. A young cop is the hero, the mover, the enforcer. Yet she is cold, unemotional, ruthless at times, and always in control. While she is not an anti-heroine, nei-ther is she particularly sympathetic because she is never in peril.

By contrast, there are two victims (not in the fatal sense) who are warm, living humans with faults, whom you root for. The first is another cop who was traumatized after being shot four times prior to the start of this book. The en-tire plot focuses on our cop heroine strategizing to shock him into recovering his former sense of self while identifying a serial killer. The second victim is a psychiatrist who seems capable of always saying the right words, taking the correct actions, to move the story line along. Both of these two are the ones you want to see win.

While it becomes fairly obvious who the perpetrator is well before the book ends, the suspense arises from how the tale plays out and how it will end. And there is the surprise, bittersweet, you will discover should you decide to read.

What I found especially intriguing is that the author was able to portray all the mind games that the layman usually associates with psychiatry and its practi-tioners. If her portrayal is accurate, she has done an excellent job.

This is the sixth or seventh in the series involving this cop, but the first I have read. I suspect some of the cast of characters repeat in the other books. I in-tend to read more of this author.