SHARK MUSIC

Think of the killer like a shark: `It has a vast territory, wide and long, and this creature is constantlyin motion, always looking for prey.' `Love is the death of me,' read the handwritten note. The gunshot victimwas found in Detective Sergeant Kathy Mallory's apartment. It was notclear at first if it was homicide or suicide. And Mallory haddisappeared.... But by a trace of credit card activity, Mallory's faithful partner,Riker, knew that she had filled her gas tank in the states of Pennsylvaniaand Ohio. She was leaving a trail. Eight hundred miles from New York, another corpse had been found - a man,laid out on the tarmac, pointing towards Route 66. Over the years a number of bodies had been discovered along this famousroad - all little girls, aged between five and seven. Mallory's mother had died when she was only six, and she had never knownher father. She was a child of high technology and cold logic, but therewas a void within her which could only be assuaged by recovering her past. SHARK MUSIC is Carol O'Connell's finest achievement - a thrilling,complex and emotional novel which explores the hopes and despairs of lostparents and lost children. It is a journey which can only end in tears. 'It is seldom that critics make a unanimous judgement. But when O'Connellunleashed New York cop Kathy Mallory on an unsuspecting world in Mallory'sOracle, every one agreed that there had never been a fictional detectivelike her ... Mallory grips us like a hand on the throat.' The Times