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Red Hearts
Death comes in threes.
Albuquerque is New Mexico's city of enchantment. But an unresolved bloody past haunts the people of this city of half a million. For two years a killer lay silent. Now the signature killings of the Boulder Hill killer have started anew.
For police lieutenant Dakota Blackwood, an Apache who rose to prominence in the Albuquerque Police Department, the discovery of Angela Janine Walker's body rekindles images of the killer's previous spree.
This latest horror serves as a painful reminder of Blackwood's earlier failure to stop the menace. The clock has started. Two more will die if the Boulder Hill killer lives up to his previous pattern. This time the killer taunts Dakota to retake the playing field.
This high stakes, ruthless game has resumed. But another bitter struggle consumes Dakota's While one monster slowly destroys the woman he loves, another selects nameless victims to die.
Albuquerque is New Mexico's city of enchantment. But an unresolved bloody past haunts the people of this city of half a million. For two years a killer lay silent. Now the signature killings of the Boulder Hill killer have started anew.
For police lieutenant Dakota Blackwood, an Apache who rose to prominence in the Albuquerque Police Department, the discovery of Angela Janine Walker's body rekindles images of the killer's previous spree.
This latest horror serves as a painful reminder of Blackwood's earlier failure to stop the menace. The clock has started. Two more will die if the Boulder Hill killer lives up to his previous pattern. This time the killer taunts Dakota to retake the playing field.
This high stakes, ruthless game has resumed. But another bitter struggle consumes Dakota's While one monster slowly destroys the woman he loves, another selects nameless victims to die.
- GenresMystery
410 pages, Kindle Edition
First published June 30, 1999
1 person is currently reading
233 people want to read
About the author
J.M. Barlog
18 books74 followersBarlog grew up in Chicago before serving in Vietnam with the U.S. Air Force.
He has authored numerous novels across many genres. Windows to the Soul, his debut novel, won the Readers' Choice award for suspense at an Illinois 'Love Is Murder' Mystery Conference.
But his greatest accomplishments are his three children and his grandchildren.
Barlog currently lives with his wife in Southern California, where he is busy writing sequels to his popular novels The Heart of the Lion, Minno, and A Connecticut Nightmare.
He has authored numerous novels across many genres. Windows to the Soul, his debut novel, won the Readers' Choice award for suspense at an Illinois 'Love Is Murder' Mystery Conference.
But his greatest accomplishments are his three children and his grandchildren.
Barlog currently lives with his wife in Southern California, where he is busy writing sequels to his popular novels The Heart of the Lion, Minno, and A Connecticut Nightmare.
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Displaying 1 - 3 of 3 reviews
October 1, 2013
By the end of the 3rd chapter in this story, I was railing at the detectives, “You stupid idiots. You’re looking at the wrong people for the wrong reasons. It is so obvious that your FBI profile is wrong.” And then I realized that, based on the publication date for the book and based on the timeframe of the story, the profile was exactly what the detectives would have reasoned out.
This story started out with such a modern flair to it that I momentarily forgot that it had been published in the year 2000, creating a storyline about murders that took place in 1995 and 1997. In that timeframe, certain personal relationships were still kept very private as a matter of personal and professional survival. And the average reader in the year 2000 would probably have no more suspected the truth than the profilers in the story did. But this is not the year 2000; it is 2013 as I write this review and some significant things in our culture have changed.
Thus, readers in the year 2000 would have probably perceived this book as a mystery while to us, in 2013, it is more a thriller. We, in our current culture, quickly know who the villain is, can easily spot the clues that show why the profile is wrong, and must endure until the detectives finally get it right.
But there were some significant and unrealistic plot manipulations, particularly in the last third of the book, that even readers in the year 2000 would probably pick up. For instance, the detectives were incredibly thorough in their research of all names associated with each victim, but they didn’t pick up on the match between the original victim’s last name and the last name of one of the mourners at Dakota’s wife’s funeral.
Secondly, and more obvious, was the take down scene of the killer. The author wrote Dakota as distracted and unaware that the killer was standing behind him. Since he had set up the sting, that distraction was unrealistic. Not to mention he had at least three cops watching his back, who actually let the killer get close enough to that back to stab Dakota. Oh, it made for great drama but it was not realistic.
There were other inconsistencies earlier in the story, mistakes such as describing an injury as peri-mortem and then shortly thereafter as post-mortem. And there was the entire section devoted to the first attempt to apprehend the killer in a hospital, where the author detailed extensively their plans to do so without creating either a panic or an alert to the killer, even to the point that they refused to notify hospital security of their intent. And then the author has Dakota entering the hospital with his Beretta in hand and having not a soul notice or even asking the first question of them.
Even with these inconsistencies the plot was a good one and the reasons given to the killings and the killer’s actions throughout the book were well thought out psychologically. The author’s command of language and sentence structure was excellent. The sections of the novel were well defined and the story flowed logically from section to section and chapter to chapter. And the author did not create any sudden, unbelievable “got it” moments.
However, it was the previously mentioned plot contrivances and a few unmentioned opened-but-abandoned-without-explanation plot areas that seemed to weaken the effort. For these reasons, and not because of the profiling issue, I felt the need to reduced my rating to a 4.
I received this book through the Goodreads Giveaway program. This fact did not in any way influence my opinion of the book.
This story started out with such a modern flair to it that I momentarily forgot that it had been published in the year 2000, creating a storyline about murders that took place in 1995 and 1997. In that timeframe, certain personal relationships were still kept very private as a matter of personal and professional survival. And the average reader in the year 2000 would probably have no more suspected the truth than the profilers in the story did. But this is not the year 2000; it is 2013 as I write this review and some significant things in our culture have changed.
Thus, readers in the year 2000 would have probably perceived this book as a mystery while to us, in 2013, it is more a thriller. We, in our current culture, quickly know who the villain is, can easily spot the clues that show why the profile is wrong, and must endure until the detectives finally get it right.
But there were some significant and unrealistic plot manipulations, particularly in the last third of the book, that even readers in the year 2000 would probably pick up. For instance, the detectives were incredibly thorough in their research of all names associated with each victim, but they didn’t pick up on the match between the original victim’s last name and the last name of one of the mourners at Dakota’s wife’s funeral.
Secondly, and more obvious, was the take down scene of the killer. The author wrote Dakota as distracted and unaware that the killer was standing behind him. Since he had set up the sting, that distraction was unrealistic. Not to mention he had at least three cops watching his back, who actually let the killer get close enough to that back to stab Dakota. Oh, it made for great drama but it was not realistic.
There were other inconsistencies earlier in the story, mistakes such as describing an injury as peri-mortem and then shortly thereafter as post-mortem. And there was the entire section devoted to the first attempt to apprehend the killer in a hospital, where the author detailed extensively their plans to do so without creating either a panic or an alert to the killer, even to the point that they refused to notify hospital security of their intent. And then the author has Dakota entering the hospital with his Beretta in hand and having not a soul notice or even asking the first question of them.
Even with these inconsistencies the plot was a good one and the reasons given to the killings and the killer’s actions throughout the book were well thought out psychologically. The author’s command of language and sentence structure was excellent. The sections of the novel were well defined and the story flowed logically from section to section and chapter to chapter. And the author did not create any sudden, unbelievable “got it” moments.
However, it was the previously mentioned plot contrivances and a few unmentioned opened-but-abandoned-without-explanation plot areas that seemed to weaken the effort. For these reasons, and not because of the profiling issue, I felt the need to reduced my rating to a 4.
I received this book through the Goodreads Giveaway program. This fact did not in any way influence my opinion of the book.
October 3, 2013
the story opens with a detective and a awful crime, victims throats slashed and a serial killer on the loose. The detective's wife's cancer is back, and its not looking good. This book draws you in from the first page. It is extremely descriptive, and incredibly moving. I started this book, yesterday and have just now finished it. It draws you completely into the story, you will not be able to put this book down.
September 6, 2013
Red Hearts is an attempt at a Tony Hillerman-esque type mystery, only with an Apache detective, Dakota Blackwood, instead of a Navajo. The problem is that he doesn't seem all that Native American.
He's on the trail of a serial killer he missed two years ago, and is starting to kill again. Meanwhile, his wife is dying of cancer.
It's all pretty standard stuff, right down to the pseudo Freudian motivation for the killer.
He's on the trail of a serial killer he missed two years ago, and is starting to kill again. Meanwhile, his wife is dying of cancer.
It's all pretty standard stuff, right down to the pseudo Freudian motivation for the killer.
Displaying 1 - 3 of 3 reviews