Product Description

Massachusetts State Investigator Win Garano is given one of his most challenging cases yet when he is asked to investigate the death of a young British woman murdered more than forty years ago. Assumed to be a victim of the Boston Strangler, blind Janie Brolin was raped and left for dead in 1962. With no DNA and sketchy police records, this is a case that will test Garano to his limits. It will take him on a journey through the archives, into the latest innovations in forensic technology, and into partnership with senior officers at London's New Scotland Yard. And as Garano unearths deadly secrets from the past, his hard-nosed boss Monique Lamont is putting both their lives in jeopardy with her lust for power and success. With past and present colliding, the tension mounts with every page...

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #22156 in Books
• Published on: 2008-12-29
• Original language: English
• Binding: Paperback
• 240 pages

About the Author
Patricia Cornwell's first novel, POSTMORTEM, was published in 1990 and won five international awards. Her Scarpetta novels have since become Number One bestsellers throughout the world. She has also published three police procedurals.

Customer Reviews

The Front
I wish I had read the other reviews before i purchased my copy. This was possibly the worst book Cornwell has written. I was disappointed with her previous book but decided to risk this one. The plot was sketchy, if there was a plot at all and it skipped from character to character without fleshing any one of them out. The investigation by Win appeared to be superfluous to the story, and why were all the characters so abusive to each other yet at the same time appeared to convey a sexua overtone.Not one of the characters rung true and i couldn't understand why they would even bother to talk to each other, lete alone get into each others beds'. I would not recommend this book to anyone and wish Cornwell would go back to her best loved characters ie Scarletta, Lucy etc. I will hesitate to read any more Patricia Cornwell books in the future. What a shame.A good author gone bad.

Another disappointment...
I have been an avid fan of Patricia Cornwell since book 1 but of late I have been extremely disappointed and this book was no exception. It lacks everything that made her earlier books so gripping and I can't help but think that maybe this was written for the money. The plot is poor, the characters feeble and well, I did read it through to the end but only because I had paid good money for. I think that in future I will be giving her books a wide berth.

The Queen of Crime Writing? The crown has slipped...
I have been an avid reader of Patricia Cornwell in the past. I've read all her other novels and have given her a glowing recommendation to any friends who were looking for a new author. However her last few books haven't quite been up to her usual high standard. I read At Risk last year and was sorely disappointed. Thankful that I'd only spent 50p reserving it from the library - I found it lacked depth, the characters were sketchy and the plot was half hearted, rushed and quite frankly pointless. I feel that Cornwell has been dining out on her early successes for too long now - its almost as if she's not trying very hard now and just knocking them out on a yearly basis. This is an insult to all her loyal fans. Its about quality, not quantity dear....

So you can imagine I had mixed feelings when I received an advance copy of the sequel to At Risk - The Front. Part of me felt honoured; excited at being given such and opportunity, but at the same time wary as I desperately wanted Cornwell to return to form.

The Front is a slight improvement. It sees the return of State Investigator Win Garano, who is called into resurrect the unsolved case of an English woman who was murdered in Massachusetts in the 60s. Win's beautiful, ambitious, boss, the ball-breaking Assistant District Attorney Monique Lamont has a hidden political agenda for reopening the case, and yet again she uses Win as a pawn in her games. The deeper Win delves, the more it becomes apparent that all is not what it seems...who is investigating who, and who is setting up who?

The last four books I've read have all been written by British authors, so I had to get my head round reading American English rather than English English again. However, the grammar is atrocious at times! The Front does have the makings of a good crime novel, yet it lacks depth. I'm not a particular fan of short stories - which is what this effectively is. I prefer to invest time in seeing the development of characters and a good juicy plot. I think the only reason I enjoyed this more than At Risk is that I have been introduced to the characters before. Win Garano, not as well rounded a male protagonist as Andy Brazil, but reasonably likeable. His Nana, the White Witch, is probably the most likeable of all the characters. Monique Lamont is a sort of Wilhelmina Slater from Ugly Betty type of character, complete with her very own male assistant and insatiable sex drive. Win is paired up with a female cop to help investigate the case: Stump, another example of the now apparently staple Cornwell character - strong female, slightly masculine, can probably beat the all the men in bench presses...but still sexy and desirable - see Lucy Farinelli; Virginia West etc.

The plot's ok, and in a full length novel could be great if really developed properly. However, its just all a bit rushed. Win solves the murder over about 5 pages, then inexplicably covers up for his superbitch boss in a pantomime twist at the end. We even get treated to a bit of amateur psychology in the last few pages, possibly in an attempt at explaining the motivations of Lamont's character.

I think it's time for Cornwell to take a break, get back to the roots of what originally inspired her to create one of the best and most popular crime series of recent years - and stop succumbing to commercial pressure by releasing work that is beneath her previous high standard and just comes across as amateurish.

Can I just make this appeal? "Whoever has kidnapped Patricia Cornwell...can we have her back please?"