Authors: Carol O'Connell.
Paperback, 544 pages
Publisher: Berkley
Publication Date: 2007-10-02


Reviews :

    On Route 66, as word travels that children's grave sites are being discovered along the road, the parents of missing children form a silent caravan. They are being shepherded by NYPD Detective Kathleen Mallory, who seeks a killer like none she has ever known-and a child unlike the others: herself....

Authors: Carol O'Connell.
Paperback, 336 pages
Publisher: Jove
Publication Date: 1995-06-01


Reviews :

    Escaping from the streets of New York when a kind police sergeant takes her in, Kathleen Mallory grows up to become a proud member of the NYPD and embarks on a dangerous case to find her father's murderer. Reprint. AB. K. ...

Authors: Carol O'Connell.
Paperback, 400 pages
Publisher: Jove
Publication Date: 1998-07-01


Reviews :

    NYPD Detective Kathleen Mallory is back--to face her most terrifying obsession--the murder of her own mother......

    At the end of Killing Critics, the third book in Carol O'Connell's addictive series about Mallory, a strikingly original New York City cop, Mallory is traveling south on a train. "She carried no stitch of formal identification that would tie her to a name or a place. This was the way she had come to New York as a child, with only her wits and a bit of a mother's blood on her hands ..." Stone Angel shows us both the beginning and end of that journey, solving mysteries set up in O'Connell's first two books in the series--Mallory's Oracle and The Man Who Cast Two Shadows--as well as raising the inevitable question of what she can do for an encore. Even if the Mallory books end here, O'Connell's future seems secure: these dark and powerful myths are sure to be read and reread for a long time....

Authors: Carol O'Connell.
Paperback, 410 pages
Publisher: Arrow Books Ltd
Publication Date: 1999-10-28


Reviews :

    Sadie's purple bike was found abandoned at the bus stop. Then her friend disappeared, which led the police to propose a runaway theory to the press. But State Police Investigator Rouge Kendall wasn't convinced, thinking back 15 years to the imprisonment of Father Paul Marie for a similar crime....

    Readers familiar with Mallory, the intriguing and original heroine of O'Connell's four previous suspense novels, will recognize familiar themes of loss and abandonment in the brilliant, enigmatic forensic psychologist Ali Cray, whose scarred face only hints at the emotional residue of a childhood trauma. Ali ties the mysterious disappearance of two young girls to the rape and murder long ago of Susan Kendall, the twin sister of a small-town New York policeman, Rouge. Realizing that the priest who was convicted of Susan Kendall's murder is probably innocent, Rouge has a personal as well as professional reason for joining Ali in tracking down Susan's killer before he completes the ritual murder of at least one of the missing girls.

The protagonists of Judas Child are direct literary descendants of Mallory, the author's earlier creation; like her, their childhood suffering illuminates their adult character and motivation. But while Mallory can only react to the past, Rouge and Ali find in each other a mirror that lights up the dark corners of their past and frees them of the survivor guilt both suffer. O'Connell's same penetrating psychological insight animates the novel's other characters: Dr. Mortimer Cray, Ali's uncle, a psychiatrist who bears the awful burden of knowing who the killer is but is constrained by professional ethics from revealing it; gutsy, clever Sadie Green, the Judas child of the title, and her irritating, annoying, desperate mother, Becca; FBI agent Arnie Pyle, who's dying to know how Ali got her scar; and Father Paul Marie, jailed for 15 years for a crime he may not have committed. The opening sentence grabs the reader, and doesn't let go till the last page. In her skilled rendering of psychological suspense, O'Connell is on a par with Barbara Vine and Frances Fyfield; like Jonathan Kellerman, she is also an astute observer of children, especially those who survive the most terrifying youthful traumas and betrayals. Judas Child may be O'Connell's "breakout" book, and it will surely send readers who've just discovered her in search of her backlist while they await her next one. --Jane Adams...

Authors: Carol O'Connell.
Mass Market Paperback, 336 pages
Publisher: Jove
Publication Date: 1996-07-01


Reviews :

    Brilliant computer hacker and NYPD sergeant Kathleen Mallory is forced to test the limits of her intelligence when she confronts a deadly killer who strikes close to home in more ways than one. Reprint. K. ...

Authors: Carol O'Connell.
Paperback, 368 pages
Publisher: Berkley
Publication Date: 2005-09-06


Reviews :

    A reclusive senior citizen kills an intruder--but there's more to the story. In Carol O'Connell's new novel New York City officer Kathleen Mallory purges a woman of her mysterious past--and the flesh-and-blood ghosts of a violent family legacy....

Authors: Carol O'Connell.
Paperback, 416 pages
Publisher: Berkley
Publication Date: 2000-08-01


Reviews :

    A magic trick gone fatally wrong engages the talents of "one of the genre's most original and intriguing characters."*-New York City homicide detective Kathleen Mallory. (*Cleveland Plain Dealer)

"One Of O'connell's Best." -Milwaukee Journal Sentinel

"O'Connell admirably treads the tightrope between appearance and reality, memory and history, the magic and mundane."-Atlanta Journal-Constitution...

    There has always been a touch of magic, a whiff of deception and illusion about Mallory, the New York homicide detective who never lets anyone call her Kathy. In highly praised books such as Killing Critics, Mallory's Oracle, and The Man Who Cast Two Shadows, Carol O'Connell has wrapped her fascinating, frustrating character in a cloak of myth. So it's no surprise that in her fifth adventure, Mallory is literally surrounded by magic and magicians, trying to find out why an old illusionist was killed while re-creating a famous trick involving four crossbows.

All of the suspects are magicians themselves, connected to the past and each other by events in Paris during World War II. One of them, a self-declared madman named Malakhai, lives in a mental hospital and maintains an elaborate fantasy involving his dead wife. There's a marvelous set piece early on--a poker game at which this invisible woman not only takes a seat but also makes bets, wins hands, and smokes lipsticked cigarettes. Of course Mallory is largely on her own in the investigation: she insults her only two friends and alienates all her police colleagues with her weird, unorthodox methods.

O'Connell is a richly poetic writer who fills her books with fleeting samples of everyone from Rilke and T.S. Eliot to Billie Holiday. Even if you're not deeply interested in how magicians work their magic, you should find enough other pleasures here to enjoy the author's superb bag of tricks. --Dick Adler ...

Authors: Carol O'Connell.
Paperback, 336 pages
Publisher: Berkley
Publication Date: 2004-09-07


Reviews :

    Jurors on a controversial trial are being killed off one by one, and only Detective Kathleen Mallory can figure out why. But the FBI has told her to lay off and leave it to the Feds. That's never stopped Mallory before....

    To summarize the plot of Dead Famous would be to spoil it, since O'Connell keeps revealing it layer by layer as you go along--a daring technique, and a rewarding one if you're a patient reader. Suffice it to say that the story involves a seemingly unstoppable serial killer; a beautiful hunchback with tragedy in her past; a radio shock-jock who helps the killer find his victims; an extremely mean house cat; a gloomy veteran cop drinking himself into oblivion; and, at the center of it all, NYPD detective Kathy Mallory, who returns here for her seventh outing. Mallory (don't call her Kathy) is one of the strangest, most intriguing series heroines in crime fiction: a former street waif who's brilliant and gorgeous, but also sociopathic, manipulative, and obsessive-compulsive.

No formulaic cop thriller, Dead Famous is instead a crime tale that focuses on its quirky, often outre characters. There isn't a lot of conventional suspense. Yet near the end, the story gathers tremendous narrative momentum and rises to a real tragic power. O'Connell's quirky writing style and approach aren't for everyone, but her fans--old and new--will find much to appreciate here. --Nicholas H. Allison...

Authors: Carol O'Connell.
Paperback, 400 pages
Publisher: Jove
Publication Date: 1997-07-01


Reviews :

    As NYPD Detective Sergeant Kathleen Mallory probes the death of a hack artist at a local gallery opening, she uncovers links to a bizarre twelve-year-old double homicide and dismemberment. Reprint. PW. K. "...

Authors: Carol O'Connell.
Paperback, 416 pages
Publisher: Jove
Publication Date: 2003-08-26


Reviews :

    Police Detective Kathleen Mallory recognized the crime scene: victim hanging, hair in mouth, fire burning. It happened twenty-one years ago, when Mallory was a child. She also recognized the victim......

    Mallory, the feral street urchin adopted by an understanding police detective, grew up to be a tough, formidable cop herself, and in the five earlier thrillers featuring her exploits, Carol O'Connell has dropped few clues about her early life. Crime School fills in the blanks with this complex tale about Mallory's efforts to solve the attempted murder of the knife-wielding prostitute who once sheltered and later betrayed her--a copycat crime nearly identical to another that occurred two decades ago. Fans of this series and its unique, complicated, steely protagonist will welcome O'Connell back to the bestseller lists after a protracted absence, while those who've been waiting for the emergence of a kinder, gentler Mallory, able to return the affections of those who love her--like Charles Butler, the quirky criminologist whose unrequited adoration of Mallory knows no bounds, and her partner, Riker, who's known her since his old friend Markowitz plucked her off the streets--may be disappointed. --Jane Adams...