| Catherine “Cat” Ferry is a forensic odontologist, a specialist in bite marks and the clues they provide. But while Cat’s colleagues know her as a world-class scientist, she secretly attempts to manage her fragile psyche with alcohol, delving into the minds of rapists and murderers yet never allowing her own frightening past to creep into the foreground. Cat’s latest case involves a disturbing murder in New Orleans. Banishing her personal demons, she focuses on the potential killer, until one morning she’s paralyzed by a panic attack at a grisly murder scene. Praying the attack is a onetime event, she continues her job as a consultant to the New Orleans Police Department, but when another victim dies in the same shocking way - raising fears that a serial killer is at large - Cat blacks out over the victim’s mutilated corpse.
Suspended from the FBI task force, plagued by nightmares, and at odds with her married lover - a homicide detective - Cat finally reaches her breaking point. In a desperate effort to regain control over a life spiraling out of control, Cat retreats to her hometown of Natchez, Mississippi. But her family’s secluded antebellum estate provides no sanctuary.
When some of Cat’s forensic chemicals are spilled in her childhood bedroom, two bloody footprints are revealed. This sight shocks her more than any corpse she has seen in her career. Cat’s father was murdered when she was eight years old, but she always believed the crime occurred in the garden outside their home. The bloody footprints suggest otherwise. Driven by this fragment of her past, Cat attempts a forensic reconstruction of the decades-old crime, even as developments with the New Orleans task force pull her back into the case she left behind. Plagued by troubling nightmares, Cat pieces together the horrifying events she has been shielded from all her life. Soon, both she and the FBI realize that the murders occurring now in New Orleans are intimately bound up with Cat’s family and her past.
Can Cat trust her own memories? Or has the truth been so distorted that she can never know her family’s real history? Finding a solution to these intertwined murders means more than stopping a remorseless killer - it may be the only way to save Cat Ferry’s sanity . . . and her life. Greg Iles is a masterful storyteller. In this dramatic novel of suspense he deftly probes the relationship between good and evil, and the unique power of human memory to reconstruct - or completely reinvent - the past. |
Reader's Reviews
Average Reader Review:   [Based on 6 reviews]
 no not worth it
by tatiania on April 10 2008
this is soo not like illes...i usually love his
books but this one i couldnt get into tried on
different occasions...and not interesting story
or a captivating plot...sorry but no..
Not Bad
by Leo on May 01 2007
Excellent book with good story.Was hoping for a
real twist,but was longer story than needed and
with a predictable outcome.All in all a excellent
book.
 blood memory
by victor on April 02 2007
Very sensitive subject is finally addressed.
Real people, real issues, reasonably good plot,
and excellent naration.
Great story, sad, sad subject
by Laurie on March 22 2007
This book was a wonderful and suspensful mystery,
but with very dark subject matter. It is about
child abuse and it‘s pervasiveness within the
family unit. I thought about not telling even that
much in this review for not wanting to spoil any
of the story for you, but you need to know what
you are going to be reading, especially if your
own life has been impacted by this horror. The
story was good and was well written, just be aware
of what you may be getting into. I lost sleep over
this one.
 Blood Memory
by Penelope on March 13 2007
Disturbing in it‘s theme (incest), but very
good.
Blood Memory
by john on January 19 2007
Very fast pace and fun plot!! Nice to have some
escape from fast pace life.
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