Publisher's Weekly Review
Near the start of bestseller O'Connell outstanding 10th novel featuring New York City cop Kathy Mallory (after 2006's Find Me), the enigmatic Mallory, despite having been declared mentally unfit to return to duty following an unexplained three month long absence, nonchalantly reclaims her desk in the Special Crimes Unit. Nobody questions "Mallory the Machine," especially after she connects with a savantlike child found wandering alone in Central Park. Eight-year-old Coco has witnessed a kidnapping and murder, but the girl is incapable of describing the killer. The murder of Coco's uncle is one of three similar crimes that Mallory begins to suspect are linked to a couple of cold cases as well as to pervasive corruption among the city's elite. O'Connell's awesome ability to weave a taut, complex plot works with Mallory's equally awesome detective skills as she unearths each crystalline facet of crimes both past and present. Author tour. (Jan.) (c) Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved.
Kirkus Review
Copyright Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.
Booklist Review
Kathy Mallory of the NYPD's Special Crimes Unit may be the Lord Byron of police detectives. Like Byron, the gorgeous and beyond-eccentric Mallory is mad, bad, and dangerous to know. In this remarkable series, Mallory, wounded by a horrific childhood, concentrates her entire being on the vengeful pursuit of bad guys, using some well-developed criminal skills to flush them out of hiding. Mallory is pulled out of leave (brought on by the department psychiatrist's labeling her as dangerously unstable ) by a case her superiors think that only she, rocky as she is, can solve. The case turns on one witness, an eight-year-old girl with a rare genetic disorder that leaves her physically and emotionally vulnerable, who knew a serial killer's first victim, found hanging from a tree in Central Park. Victims range from a homeless man to a prep-school boy and his grieving parents. O'Connell delivers shock after shock, held together by exquisitely detailed police and forensic procedure and by the riveting, punishing figure of Mallory herself.--Fletcher, Connie Copyright 2010 Booklist
New York Review of Books Review
McGill's efforts to protect Zella and his own large, fractious family take him all over the city, from an East River mansion with priceless art in the living room to a shabby house in Coney Island with a decomposing corpse in the laundry room. These purposeful wanderings put him in contact with a profusion of wonderfully shifty characters like Sweet Lemon Charles, a "lifetime thief" turned poet, and a retired assassin named Hush who currently owns a fleet of limousines. McGill, of course, is the most vivid character of them all, smart and tough and huge of heart, but decidedly touchy about his diminutive stature. Although skin color is also important to this middle-aged black man, height is what really matters - and there's a reason for that. "Big men throw around their weight from an early age," McGill reflects. "At some point they assume this is a God-given right. Every now and then it's good for a short guy like me to disrupt that surety." Spoken like a man. A very big man. More! More! More! Fans are always clamoring for additional information about the personal lives of their favorite detectives. But who knew that even authors sometimes wish they'd been more forthcoming about their sleuths' early careers? In her 17th Anna Pigeon mystery, THE ROPE (Minotaur, $25.99), Nevada Barr goes back to 1995 to explain the dramatic circumstances that determined why this National Park Service ranger decided to go into law enforcement. "I believe more women should carry guns," Anna says at the end of the book. "I believe armed women will make the world a better place. Women need to come to think of themselves not as victims but as dangerous." But what drove this reserved woman to make such an extraordinarily defiant statement? As a stage manager who fled New York after the loss of her husband, Anna has little wilderness experience and no commitment to her job at the Glen Canyon National Recreation Area on the Arizona-Utah border. But after witnessing a murder, she wakes up naked, injured and at the mercy of whoever threw her into a 30-foot-deep pit. It's a harrowing survival story, well imagined and forcefully told, about a brutal act that inspires a weak woman to become a strong one. Like every mother's child, every author's detective is exceptional. But Carol O'Connell takes it way over the top with the mythic scale of her mad-genius New York City cop, Kathy Mallory. In THE CHALK GIRL (Putnam, $25.95), the ineffably gorgeous and phenomenally gifted detective (Mallory the Machine to her browbeaten colleagues) takes over the protection of an 8-year-old girl called Coco who witnessed a grisly murder in Central Park. Coco has Williams syndrome, a genetic condition that accounts for her angelic features and extreme craving for physical affection - qualities that leave her vulnerable to predators like Uncle Red and whoever strung him up in a tree and let the rats have at him. Mallory's idiosyncrasies make her a natural for this bizarre case, but her professional skills and belligerent manner are broadcast in a comic-book idiom so lurid it would make even Lisbeth Salander blush. With its inviting typeface, touchy-feely paper stock and come-hither cover illustration of an English street scene shimmering under gaslight, THE ANATOMIST'S APPRENTICE (Kensington, paper, $15), Tessa Harris's first historical novel about a pioneering American anatomist in London, pretty much jumps into your hands. There's even a glossary (with entries for "French pox" and "miasma," even "grave wax") to let us know exactly what we're in for with this densely plotted yarn about a crafty 18th-century poisoner wreaking havoc on the Oxfordshire estate of a noble family. Once he's finally allowed access to the corpse of the young Earl Crick, Dr. Thomas Silkstone does a grimly admirable job of countering this wickedness by practicing his own blend of scientific arts. Unfortunately, the author seems not to know when she's onto a good thing, and proceeds to gum up the fascinating details of early forensics with a sticky romance and Grand Guignol contrivances. Nonetheless, we await - indeed, demand - the sequel. Walter Mosley comes from the Raymond Chandler pick-up-sticks school of plot construction.
Library Journal Review
It has been five years since O'Connell gave us a new novel in her Mallory series, but the action picks up only a few weeks after we last saw Mallory melting down in Find Me. Once again, a child is in jeopardy, one who may be a witness to a series of grisly crimes in New York's Central Park. Coco is an unusual child, but she charms even the antisocial detective Mallory, though her partner, Riker, and friend Charles Butler doubt how deeply she can care for the little girl. But Mallory, who predates both Dexter Morgan and Lisbeth Salander as an unlikely crime-stopping sociopath, does care for Coco-in her own violently protective way. As Mallory and Riker unravel the mystery, older crimes are uncovered, along with the ways adults repeatedly fail the children around them. VERDICT O'Connell offers more than a suspenseful tale; she portrays a complex world of dark and light, corruption and love, in a New York City that retains its grittiness. Another must-read in a compelling and rich crime series. [See Prepub Alert, 7/11/11.]-Devon Thomas, DevIndexing, Chelsea, MI (c) Copyright 2011. Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.
![Cover image for The Chalk girl [text (large print)] : Kathleen Mallory #10 / Carol O'Connell.](/client/assets/5.898/ctx//client/images/no_image.png "Cover image for The Chalk girl [text (large print)] : Kathleen Mallory #10 / Carol O'Connell.")