Review: A KILLING NIGHT, Jonathon King

• this edition published in 2005 by Orion
• #4 in the Max Freeman series
• ISBN 0-75286-936-1
• 289 pages
• source: my local library

Synopsis (Fantastic Fiction)

Max Freeman is at a crossroads. No longer content to live solely in his remote shack in the Everglades, he is looking to move beyond his self-imposed isolation. So when his onetime girlfriend, Detective Sherry Richards, asks for his help as a private investigator in nailing an ex-cop she suspects of killing several young women in South Florida, Max is ready to help her see justice done.

But there's a problem. Sherry's suspect is a former police officer from Philadelphia who served with Max; a brother-in-blue who once saved Max's life. Matters are made worse when Max's own aggressive investigation leads him to believe that Sherry's crusade to protect these women is about to roll over a possibly innocent man.

Caught between his loyalty to Sherry and his debt to his fellow ex-cop, Max's search for the truth will take him back to the streets of Philadelphia, where he will dig into his fellow officer's troubled past . . . only to come face-to-face with his own. And while Max continues his quest, a controlling, cunning killer inexorably closes in on what could be his next victim. . . . 

My take

Three female bartenders in South Florida have gone missing and the finger of suspicion points at Colin O'Shea, a childhood friend of Max Freeman's, also a former cop that he worked with in Philadelphia. But Colin swears he is innocent and Max believes him.

So Max finds himself trying to work out if there is a serial killer on the loose, and at the same time he is trying to prove that it isn't Colin.

Max is also working for Billy Manchester, a black attorney that he also grew up with in Philadelphia. Billy is working on a case of cruise liner employees who are being threatened by stand over thugs,

I found the story a bit slow in the beginning. The author seemed to need to fill me in on some details that I already knew even though I have only read #1 in the series. This story has many strands and both Max and the serial killer speak in the first person, which initially takes a bit of careful reading,

My rating: 4.4

4.4, THE BLUE EDGE OF MIDNIGHT

Review: THE BLUE EDGE OF MIDNIGHT, Jonathon King

• this edition published in 2003 by Orion Books
• ISBN 0-75284-967-0
• 280 pages
• source: my local library

Synopsis (Fantastic Fiction)

Max Freeman's old life ended on a night that will haunt him for ever. The night he killed a twelve year old child in self defence in a Philadelphia shootout. The night he stopped being a cop. Now he lives an existence of solitary confinement on the edge of the Florida Everglades, where he answers to no one but the demons that eat away at his conscience.

And then he finds the corpse of a child beside an ancient river, and Freeman's past explodes into the present. He is thrust into the centre of the search for a serial killer, distrusted as an outsider by the longtime residents of the Glades and considered a suspect by the police. Freeman must walk a tightrope of distrust on both sides of the law. When another child goes missing, all eyes turn to Freeman, and the ex cop, driven by his old habits and the memories of that long ago Philadelphia midnight, knows that he has no choice but to hunt down the murderer himself.

My Take

THE BLUE EDGE OF MIDNIGHT won the Edgar Award for best first novel in 2003.

One of the interesting features of the novel, given that it is published at the beginning of the 21st century, is the use of a GPS tracking device, left as a clue to detectives near the site of each child's body. For me that was a distraction because I am not sure that it worked as the author thought it might. Nor was I sure that the murderer would be able to afford to do that. Surely GPS devices in 2003 were very expensive?

The murderer appears to be trying to pin the series of murders that he is committing of children on to Max Freeman. And therein lies one of the puzzles. Apart from accidentally killing a child himself, what has Max Freeman done to become a target for a serial killer? And then secondly, why is he killing children? The answers are there, and make sense in the end.

A very dark novel painting an interesting picture of life in the Everglades, newly opened up to tourists by the road built from Tampa to Miami.

My rating: 4.4

About the author
Edgar-award winning author Jonathon King is the creator of the Max Freeman crime series set in the Everglades and on the hard streets of urban South Florida. In his previous career as a journalist, he was a police and court reporter for 24 years with the Sun-Sentinel in Fort Lauderdale and the Philadelphia Daily News.