{"id":1190,"date":"2018-12-31T16:08:50","date_gmt":"2018-12-31T16:08:50","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/wordpress.etypegoogle10.com\/?p=1190"},"modified":"2018-12-31T16:08:50","modified_gmt":"2018-12-31T16:08:50","slug":"lone-star-book-reviewsby-michelle-newby-nbcccontributing-editor-124","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/wordpress.etypegoogle10.com\/?p=1190","title":{"rendered":"Lone Star Book ReviewsBy Michelle Newby, NBCCContributing Editor"},"content":{"rendered":"
<\/div>\n

<\/span><\/span><\/span>Michelle Newby<\/span> is a reviewer for Kirkus Reviews<\/span> and Foreword Reviews, <\/span>writer, blogger at TexasBookLover.com, member of the Permian Basin Writers’ Workshop advisory committee, and a moderator for the Texas Book Festival. Her reviews appear in Pleiades Magazine, Rain Taxi, Concho River Review, Mosaic Literary Magazine, Atticus Review, The Rumpus, PANK Magazine,<\/span> and The Collagist.<\/span><\/p>\n

Lone Star Book Reviews
of Texas books appear weekly
at LoneStarLiterary.com<\/a><\/span><\/h1>\n
\n

THRILLER<\/p>\n

Meg Gardiner<\/span><\/p>\n

Into the Black Nowhere: An UNSUB Novel<\/span><\/a><\/span><\/p>\n

Dutton Books<\/p>\n

Hardcover, 978-1-1019-8555-7, (also available as an e-book, an audiobook, a paperback large print, and on audio CD), 368 pgs., $26.00<\/p>\n

January 30, 2018<\/p>\n

Shannon Kerber wakes in the night and discovers her infant daughter crying<\/span> in the arms of a stranger seated on the living-room sofa. When Shannon\u2019s husband returns from a San Antonio Spurs game, she\u2019s gone, the baby cold and crying in the draft from the open front door. Shannon is the fifth abduction in the area in the last six months. Caitlin Hendrix, a newly minted special agent with the FBI\u2019s Behavioral Analysis Unit (the famous profilers), heads to fictional Solace, Texas, to hunt a hunter.<\/p>\n

Into the Black Nowhere: An UNSUB Novel<\/span> is Meg Gardiner\u2019s<\/span> second installment in her new UNSUB series of thrillers, soon to be a CBS television series. Gardiner, a resident of Austin, is a New York Times<\/span> bestselling-author and an Edgar Award winner (China Lake, Hodder & Stoughton, 2002). I was excited to learn that her newest novel is set in Texas, and Into the Black Nowhere<\/span> does not disappoint.<\/p>\n

With no witnesses and no forensic evidence, it\u2019s as if these women have fallen through a rent in space and time. Lack of information spurs the rumor mill and, this being Texas, the occult is suspected.\u00a0 A local firearms instructor appears on television news to proclaim, \u201cSatan is loose among us.\u201d Apparently, you can shoot Satan dead with a handgun.<\/p>\n

Gardiner is merciless with her characters, who are diverse and unusually complex for the genre. Hendrix is our heroine, but honorable mention goes to Special Agent Brianne Rainey. These are smart, tough, courageous women. The small-town Texas extras are authentically quirky.<\/p>\n

While I was unimpressed early on with odd adverbs and clich\u00e9s such as \u201che attacked cases like a hawk attacks prey,\u201d Into the Black Nowhere quickly matures into a fast-paced, suspenseful part police procedural, part thriller. Just when you think you know where this is going, it disappears down an alley and reappears where you expect it least.<\/p>\n

Gardiner draws us in gradually and then hooks us hard. The FBI criminology and technology are familiar from TV and movies, but Into the Black Nowhere goes beyond. The science is innovative and the technology fun, such as using football slant-routes and interception analysis to find a suspect in a crowd.<\/p>\n

Gardiner has a sardonic wit. A sexy secretary wears a gold cross on a chain that \u201cdipped into her cleavage like a meat thermometer.\u201d Hendrix regards the suspect\u2019s attitude as \u201cLord of all he surveyed, beloved of children and small animals and all the birds in the air.\u201d She matches wits with this Ted Bundy\u2013like suspect, creating a hybrid of frightening, comedic tension.<\/p>\n

A startling variety of locations and landscapes adds interest. \u201cAs the rain turned to sleet, clouds snuffed the sunset and afternoon sank to charcoal darkness.\u201d Sensory details create atmosphere. As search dogs advance through the preternatural hush of the forest, \u201cthe clasps of their leads click against their harnesses.\u201d<\/p>\n

Into the Black Nowhere <\/span>is nicely plotted and unusually structured. Gardiner skillfully builds tension as the pace accelerates toward the most dramatic, exhausting, and satisfying ending I\u2019ve read in quite some time. Woman power, y\u2019all.<\/p>\n

* * * * *<\/p>\n<\/p><\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Michelle Newby is a reviewer for Kirkus Reviews and Foreword Reviews, writer, blogger at TexasBookLover.com, member of the Permian Basin Writers’ Workshop advisory committee, and a moderator for the Texas Book Festival. Her reviews appear in Pleiades Magazine, Rain Taxi, Concho River Review, Mosaic Literary Magazine, Atticus Review, The Rumpus, PANK Magazine, and The Collagist. […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1190","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/wordpress.etypegoogle10.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1190","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/wordpress.etypegoogle10.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/wordpress.etypegoogle10.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wordpress.etypegoogle10.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wordpress.etypegoogle10.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=1190"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/wordpress.etypegoogle10.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1190\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/wordpress.etypegoogle10.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=1190"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wordpress.etypegoogle10.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=1190"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wordpress.etypegoogle10.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=1190"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}