cover image Quicksand

Quicksand

Iris Johansen, . . St. Martin?s, $26.95 (340pp) ISBN 978-0-312-36806-7

The action-packed 12th installment in bestseller Johansen’s saga featuring forensic sculptor Eve Duncan (after Stalemate ) is also a sequel of sorts to Pandora’s Daughter , which chronicled the life of Megan Blair, an Atlanta physician with burgeoning psychic abilities. Intertwining the two disparate story lines intensifies both, as Johansen pits her two courageous female protagonists against a vicious serial killer who claims to have murdered Eve’s seven-year-old daughter, Bonnie, years earlier. When Eve’s love interest, Atlanta police lieutenant Joe Quinn, tracks down elusive child predator Henry Kistle to a small town in Illinois, Quinn alerts the local authorities and sets off a series of bloody events that lead Eve and Megan Blair to a remote area in the Okefenokee swamp where they’ll either discover the whereabouts of Bonnie’s body—or come face-to-face with a psychopath bent on killing and burying them all in unmarked graves. The adrenaline-fueled narrative will keep Johansen fans eagerly turning the pages. 600,000 first printing. (Apr.)