The Darker Side »

Cody McFadyen is the author of Shadow Man and The Face of Death, which have both been international bestsellers. The Face of Death was #5 on Amazon.com’s Best Books of 2007 Mystery/Thriller list, and was also on their list of Top 100 Books of 2007. McFadyen lives in California, and his website is www.codymcfadyen.com.

A lie, a long-ago affair, a dark desire everyone has secrets they take to the grave. No one knew that better than FBI special agent Smoky Barrett. But what secret was a very private young woman keeping that led to her very public murder? And what kind of killer was so driven and so brazenly daring that he’d take her life on a commercial airliner thirty thousand feet in midair, a killer so accomplished that he’d leave only a small souvenir behind?

These are the questions that bring Smoky and her handpicked team of experienced manhunters from L.A. to the autumn chill of Washington, D.C., by order of the FBI director himself and at the special request of a high-powered grieving D.C. mother.

As a mother, Smoky knows the pain of losing a child it nearly killed her once before. As a cop with her own twisted past, she takes every murder personally, which is both her greatest strength and her only weakness. Brilliant, merciless, righteous, the killer Smoky is hunting this time is on his own personal mission, whose cost in innocent human lives he’s only begun to collect. For in his eyes no one is innocent; everyone harbors a secret sin, including Smoky Barrett. Soon Smoky will have to confront a flawless killer who knows her flaws with murderous intimacy.

Publishers Weekly

Full of horrific violence, this solid third thriller to feature scarred FBI agent Smoky Barrett (after The Face of Death) shows that McFadyen knows how to shock. When the FBI director calls Smoky to Washington, D.C., to inspect the body of a beautiful young woman stabbed to death aboard an airplane, Smoky can't figure out why she's been assigned a case so far outside her L.A. jurisdiction. But when Smoky learns that not only was the victim, Lisa Reid, the child of a powerful Democratic senator but also that "she" was a pre-op transsexual, Smoky realizes that this is more than a bizarre homicide. Smoky and her team soon get on the trail of the man they dub "the Preacher," a sin collector who murders people to obtain their darkest secrets. Harboring secrets of her own, Smoky must stay one step ahead of the killer if she's to bring him down. The forays into the victims' minds to expose their "secrets" are unnecessary, but the formidable Smoky makes up for the occasional plot tangent. (Oct.)

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