The First Victim

The First Victim

When a female reporter disappears--purportedly at the hands of the Chinese Triad--while investigating a story on illegal aliens, Lou Boldt and John LaMoia of the Seattle Police Department embark on an investigation that leads them from Seattle's docklands to the offices of the INS in search of answers. Lieutenant Lou Boldt, the Seattle cop who stars in Ridley Pearson's deservedly popular series, is a sharp and touching figure--perhaps the most believable police officer in current fiction. Early in this ninth book about his public and private life, Lou has to put on a bullet-resistant vest to lead a raid against some dangerous criminals. "The vest was not physically heavy, but its presence was," Pearson tells us. It meant battle; it meant risk. For Boldt a vest was a symbol of youth. It had been well over a year since he had worn one. Ironically, as he approached the hangar's north door at a light run behind his own four heavily armored ERT personnel, he caught himself worrying about his hands, not his life. He didn't want to smash up his piano hands in some close quarters skirmish... Boldt plays jazz piano one night a week in a local bar, and despite his concern for his hands, he takes every opportunity he can to get away from his desk and into the streets. But money pressures, caused by his wife's recent illness, also make him think about the possibility of a better-paying job in the private sector. Meanwhile, some extremely ruthless people are murdering illegal Chinese immigrant women and leaving their bodies buried in newly dug graves. An ambitious local TV journalist named Stevie McNeal and the young Chinese woman she thinks of as her "Little Sister" risk their lives to investigate the killings, while Boldt and his team round up a most unusual array of suspects. This combination of hard-edged realism and softer sentiment has become Pearson's trademark, and once again it works smoothly. --Dick Adler Inside a shipping container that has washed ashore near Seattle during a storm is heard the "unmistakable cry of human voices." From this dramatic opening springs Pearson's sixth Lou Boldt thriller, in which the Seattle Police Department goes head to head with the INS to bust an immigrant-smuggling ring run by Chinese gangs. When TV news anchor Stevie McNeal's investigative reporting of the story leads to the disappearance of Melissa, her Chinese friend and cojournalist, Boldt, newly promoted to lieutenant and balking at the administrative duties that keep him from the field work he relishes, jumps into the investigation. Pearson puts the reader smack in the middle of a complex undercover police sting and delivers delectable characters such as Mama Lu, the fat Asian grocery maven, who resembles a "Chinese Winston Churchill." Inventive plotting and strong dialog build gripping suspense. This thriller is sure to be widely sought by library patrons. -AMolly Gorman, San Marino, CA Copyright 1999 Reed Business Information, Inc. Pearson's Lou Boldt series continues to meld the small-scale, detail-driven precision of the best procedurals with the large-canvas, screw-tightening suspense of such high-concept thrillers as Silence of the Lambs . This time, recently promoted Seattle Police Lieutenant Boldt finds himself confined to a desk while his protege, Sergeant John LaMoia, does the fieldwork. It doesn't sit well with Boldt, who, in spite of himself, craves the "dead bodies, if only because they kept his mind alive, his imagination active, and his raison d'etre intact." There are plenty of bodies to go around when a shipping container washes ashore full of Chinese immigrants, both dead and dying. An investigative reporter covering the case soon disappears, adding kidnapping to Boldt's plate and hurtling the lieutenant out of his chair and back into action, protocol notwithstanding. The trail is as multifaceted as ever, beginning with establishing time of death by studying the algae adhered to the shipping container, and ending with the discovery of a Chinese sweatshop in a confiscated freighter on Seattle's waterfront. Boldt's usual partner, forensic psychologist Daphne Matthews, plays a lesser role this time, but in her place Pearson substitutes television news anchor Stevie McNeal, who mounts her own investigation, thus introducing a meaty subplot involving media excesses. As always, Pearson builds suspense incrementally, brilliantly amassing details until his plot reaches critical mass at just the right moment. Several Boldt adventures ago, we rashly labeled Pearson "the best thriller writer alive"; time has done nothing to tarnish the accuracy of that claim. Bill Ott The smuggling of illegal aliens may be big business, but it makes for a surprisingly flat thriller for Seattle Police Lt. Lou Boldt (The Pied Piper, 1998, etc.). Delayed and threatened by a Pacific typhoon, the container ship Visage loses one of its containers overboard. When the Coast Guard picks it up, the officers on the sceneincluding