Lisa Jackson - Malice

The scent is unmistakable - gardenias, sweet and delicate, the same perfume that his beautiful first wife, Jennifer, always wore. Opening his eyes in the hospital room where he's recovering from an accident, New Orleans detective Rick Bentz sees her standing in the doorway. Then Jennifer blows him a kiss and disappears. But it couldn't have been Jennifer. She died twelve years ago.

Once out of the hospital, Bentz begins to see Jennifer everywhere, haunting ad taunting him, then vanishing without a trace. Could she still be alive ? But it was Bentz who identified Jennifer's body body after her horrible car wreck, and there had been no question in his mind that it was her crumpled form behind the wheel, her clothes, her wedding ring. He's never doubted it until now. He can't tell his new wife, Olivia, about the sightings or his secret fear that he's losing his mind, even though he knows she suspects something is wrong. But Olivia is also hiding a secret.

When a copy of Jennifer's death certificate arrives in the mail, emblazoned with a red question mark, Bentz follows the postmark trail to Los Angeles, returning to the painful memories he's tried so hard to forget, and straight into a killer's web. Reconnecting with his former LAPD colleagues, Bentz begins to piece together Jennifer's last days, but each new discovery only serves as a chilling reminder of how little he really knew about his first wife. Then the murders begin, each victim a part of Jennifer's past, each grisly corpse pointing to Bentz as the prime suspect.

Someone's been waiting patiently, silently. Someone who knows exactly what happened that night twelve years ago and has been anticipating Bentz's every move. Soon it will be Bentz's turn to suffer for his sins. But he won't be the only one made to pay the ultimate price. For a diabolical killer has now made Olivia the prime target.

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Rick Bentz left LAPD 12 years ago after a fatal shooting where he shot a teenage in self defense and his wife's horrible car accident that left him a widower to raise his daughter.
Today he is happily married to Olivia and lives and works in New Orleans. But lately, since he woke up from a short coma, he's been seeing his dead wife. It soon becomes clear that someone, his dead wife or not, wants him to return to Los Angeles.
The situation spirals downwards when former friends of Jennifer are found killed just after Rick talked to them about his dead wife and her secrets.

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I'm not at all familiar with Jackson's New Orleans series or the character Rick Bentz so I won't speak about character development but rather about a gripping thriller with only sometimes too much words to wrap it up. Malice for me felt very conclusive but had its moments when I thought nobody would go such difficult ways just for revenge.
Overall I found this book entertaining and finished it fast. Unfortunately the reader assumes too fast who's the culprit.

Rating:
Visit Lisa Jackson.

Hardcover: 432 pages
Publisher: Kensington Publishing Corporation; (April 1, 2009)
Language: English
ISBN-10: 0758211848
ISBN-13: 978-0758211842