Peril is what comes to them all: D. A. Lamont has a special job for Win Garano. As part of a new public relations campaign concerning the dangers of declining neighborhoods, she's sending him to Watertown to come up with a "drama", and she thinks she knows just the case that will serve.
Garano is very sceptical, because he knows that Watertown is also the home base for a loose association of municipal police departments called the FRONT, set up so that they don't have to be dependent on the state - much to Lamont's anger.
He senses a much deeper agenda here - but he has no idea just how deep it goes.
In the days that follow, he'll find that Lamont's task, and the places it leads him, will resemble a house of mirrors - everywhere he turns, he's not quite sure if what he's seeing is true.
"Falsehood rules", warns his grandmother.
Andy they can also kill.
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Win Garano, still buying used brand name clothes to impress his boss, D. A. Lamont, gets a new assignment: He has to solve the murder of a young British blind girl in Watertown. The case was never solved and Janine Brolin was killed in 1962. District Attorney Monique Lamont smells a huge press spectacle behind this story and already sees herself again rising to be the star in the newspapers. She ties Win into working together with one of the lead investigators of Watertown, and a member of the so called "The FRONT", pretty much independent from the state police. The FRONT are around sixty departments joined in one coalition, sharing their resources and investigation techniques.
When Win's gym bag is stolen from his grandmothers house, he instinctively follows his boss into an empty house and finds evidence that his shoes and the forgotten bottle of wine where used there he doesn't know who to trust. His boss is out of question, his partner from the FRONT seems to follow another agenda: keeping Win away from the case.
He's lost in confusion but still tries to figure out which part belongs to what.
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The second book in Cornwell's Win Garano series isn't
much better than the first one, "At Risk". The characters again or still are a mix of wish-wash, though the reader learns a few new things about one of the main characters D. A. Monique Lamont. Unfortunately she still won't get any sympathy, not from me and probably not from other readers. Her character is still a huge question mark and so much unlikeable. Poor Win doesn't get much character either. If it comes after me, his Nana and her neighbor Miss Murphy, which gets a part of half a page, are more memorable than the rest of the book.
However, I found the book slightly better than "At Risk" but still a huge failure and disappointment. Like in "At Risk" the plot just won't get paced and it seems that the reader has to drag oneself from page to page. Also the book description is highly misleading as the so called FRONT doesn't really play the role of a loose association.
The ending well, it's similar, almost the same, as in "At Risk". No surprises there or anywhere.
Overall, "At Risk" was meant to be published for a newspaper series but ended up as a highly priced Hardcover edition. It wasn't worth the money and so is "The Front": 180 pages of an empty blurb.
Rating:
Visit Patricia Cornwell.
Hardcover: 192 pages
Publisher: Putnam Adult (May 20, 2008)
Language: English
ISBN-10: 0399154183
ISBN-13: 978-0399154188
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