by Michael Connelly, 1998
Really good book – I got it from the Little Free Library in Cooper Landing, Alaska, along the bike path. It’s a crime mystery. A former FBI agent, Terry McCaleb, has received a heart transplant. The heart was from a murdered woman, Gloria Torres. Gloria’s sister, Graciela, comes to Terry while he is living and recovering on his boat in the marina. She asks him to find the killer. At first he refuses, until she tells him he has her sister’s heart. Then starts the most intricately detailed, meticulous investigation. It turns out, when Terry was an FBI agent, he tried to find the Code Killer. He never could. The Code Killer stopped killing and is mentioned only briefly in the first 300 pages, as an aside. But then, in the end, Terry finds out the Code Killer killed for Terry – to be sure Terry lived, got a new heart. He had to kill three people to get it right, and Terry figures out the three people are linked because they have the correct rare blood type for a list of people waiting for a transplant. When none of those people are rich or powerful, all eyes turn towards Terry – he becomes the #1 suspect, and then it all starts to fall into place. Fascinating, well-written, loved this book! Love this author! He is not graphic, although what he is writing about could be very disturbing. I was so afraid Buddy was going to be the murderer, but he wasn’t. Buddy is a fellow boatman who drove Terry around to investigate. He sometimes found things that no one else could find. But, thankfully, he was a good guy – the murderer was someone else. Fun book by Michael Connelly. I’ve never read him before. I have another book by him, The Closers, that Mom read last year, when she first moved into Parkwood Estates, which she said was a really good book. I will read that soon. I can’t believe she actually could read a book because she hasn’t really read one since. It must be a very good book.