Bleeding Heart
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4.0 • 3 Ratings
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- $8.99
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- $8.99
Publisher Description
In the tradition of Mary Higgins Clark -- a suspense-filled story of a young widowed mother who unwittingly endangers her own life and that of her child as she searches for closure from a painful family loss and the truth behind it.
When Maggie Collier learns that her father-in-law's murder may have been the result of his accidentally discovering the whereabouts of a kidnapped child, she takes up the investigation herself.
As she explores the seemingly idyllic lives of citizens in the quiet community of Delbrook, Wisconsin, Maggie gradually recognizes a dark and eerie menace lurking beneath the town's picture-perfect façade. And she's clearly not the only one feeling unnerved by the proceedings. Someone else is keenly interested in her search. Soon her own questions about her father-in-law's murder intersect with the investigation by a young lawyer from Chicago who is hunting for his niece's kidnapper. As they join forces, Maggie and Grant probe deeply into the lives of her seemingly respectable friends and neighbors. When everyone, it appears, has a secret to hide, Maggie enters a race against the clock to find the truth before the elusive serial killer and kidnapper can make her the next victim.
Crackling with tension and rich characterizations, Bleeding Heart hurtles toward a skillfully realized, cunningly resolved climax.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
Every family's worst nightmare haunts Powers's latest thriller (after Sunflower), in which toddler Tyler McKenzie is snatched from a Cleveland department store. Eighteen months later, in a seemingly unrelated incident, an elderly Wisconsin man named George Collier is stabbed to death at his country club. Local police conclude that a neighborhood vagrant, Tully Jackson, killed George in a botched robbery attempt, but George's widowed daughter-in-law, Maggie, is unconvinced, since Tully is gentle, kind, and a friend of Maggie's young son, Jake. When handsome Chicago lawyer Grant Holbrook shows up looking for George, he's unaware the man is dead, but after he reveals that George, at his country club, passed around some photos of the missing child, the connection is made: the night George showed the photos, he was killed. Grant is Tyler's uncle, tipped off by a mutual friend that the old man may have stumbled onto the missing boy's whereabouts. The question is: which of George's country club cronies saw those incriminating photos--and will that person next harm Maggie, Grant--or Jake? Powers populates the town of Delbrook, Wis., with memorably off-kilter types, smiling folk who sport tiny "bleeding heart" tattoos and a creepy penchant for eagle feathers. Though Maggie and Grant's meeting is impossibly cute (she whacks him in the head with a canoe paddle), they develop into likably cranky amateur sleuths, obviously destined for romance. But the hyperactive plot, strained resolution and frequently stilted dialogue will remind readers that Powers's nightmare is a far cry from real life.
