Love in All the Wrong Places

Rating:
Summary: enthralling police procedural
Review: Helen and Henry meet in a bar and after some small talk he takes her home. In the middle of the sexual encounter, Helen takes a knife and puts it through his heart. She didn't go to the bar for a pick-up; she went there to find a man who would hit on her so she could kill him. The police don't give the case very much attention figuring the woman knifed Henry because he was raping her. Not long afterward another man Helen meets in a bar gets killed in a car wash.

San Francisco Police Department Inspector Rose Burke doesn't link these two murders until a third body is discovered in Golden Gate Park with evidence from the first homicide. Rose assumes they have a serial murderer on their hands. Helen's boyfriend Jimmy is her partner in crime and helps her with some of the killings. After a thorough investigation Rose and her partner zero in on the two suspects but getting them to surrender will prove to be an impossible task.

While Rose is having marital problems and is pregnant, Helen is decompressing and the time between the need to kill a man who hits on her is growing shorter from the very beginning. Readers know Helen is a killer, and Jimmy helps her in the murders whenever she lets him. The motivation for the killings is hard to understand but that won't deter readers from finishing this enthralling police procedural thriller in one sitting. Frank Devlin doesn't need a knife to cut the heart of the reader, he just uses a word processor to make an emotional impact.

Harriet Klausner


Rating:
Summary: A novel that pulls no punches and tells it like it is
Review: She's beautiful, she's sexy and she's deadly. Helen Rainey has serious problems finding love. From the time she cradled her mother in her arms as the life drained out of her, to dealing with her father as a widower, Helen craves a love real enough to take away the pains of her losses. By now, her boyfriend Jimmy no longer fills her needs. So she is on the hunt, cruising bars and singles hangouts in search of a certain kind of man. Her good looks draw guys to her, but her sharp wit weeds out the ones who can't take it. With an acerbic humor, Helen is bitterly honest. And she is tenacious. Unfortunately, so many men she meets disappoint her. And disappointing Helen can be a fatal mistake. Upsetting Jimmy can be seriously unhealthy too. But for a psycho woman searching for the perfect guy, what better fishing ground than San Francisco?

SFPD Inspector Rose Burke is called to a gruesome death scene. Some of her police cohorts are voting it a suicide, but too much evidence points to homicide. Inspector Burke has an uneasy feeling about this one, but with the workload bordering on insanity, the investigation takes a back seat to more pressing --- meaning more politically urgent --- crimes. That is, until more bodies start showing up.

Rose has her own problems at home. Her husband Seamus seems to have lost his passion for her. She desperately wants some time alone with him, but between her job and his, they simply keep growing further apart. It seems almost natural, then, for her to turn to her unattached partner, Joshua. But it may be her dead partner who really comes between Rose and her husband.

Both Helen and Rose appear to be questioning their current relationships. Despite being on opposite sides of the law, there is an undeniable parallel to the two women's lives, a certain something that leads Rose to suspect Helen. And Rose is as tenacious as Helen.

Frank Devlin gives us a suspense novel with instant gratification: great characters, quick action, and a plot that speeds the reader to the end. Full of irreverent cop humor, LOVE IN ALL THE WRONG PLACES pulls no punches and tells it like it is.

--- Reviewed by Kate Ayers

Rating:
Summary: A Real Gem
Review: This is an excellent police procedural in the serial killer genre. Devlin's characterizations are strong; and the main characters, though familiar in their outlines, have enough nuances to make them individual and three dimensional.

The writing is very insightful, and Devlin's analysis of the complexities of relationships is spot on target. The antagonists are real, with such tragic bends in their psyches as to render them pitiable while at the same time revolting. The backdrop in San Francisco is a nice change from so many stories of this type set in NYC. Devlin is an excellent writer and storyteller, and I eagerly await his next novel--hoping it's a continuation of the relationship between Rose, Joshua, Seamus, and murder.