Mary Willis Walker

Kidnapped by a cult of religious fanatics, an Austin school bus driver and eleven of his young charges have been held beneath the ground of the group's highly fortified compound for forty-six days. While a team of federal negotiators begins to lose all hope of rescuing the hostages, crime reporter Molly Cates sets out to discover everything she can about the cult's iron-willed leader, Samuel Mordecai. And as the clock ticks inexorably, she takes the role of Clarice Starling opposite Mordecai's Lecter, engaging in a psychological confrontation every bit as harrowing as any in Silence of the Lambs.

In her latest, hard-hitting novel of suspense, award-winning writer Mary Willis Walker introduces a gutsy new heroine - Texas-based crime reporter Molly Cates - and a chilling tale of violence and revenge. As The Red Scream begins, Molly has just published her first true crime book, which describes the blood-curdling exploits of serial killer Louie Bronk. Now Louie is on death row, about to be executed by lethal injection. Molly will be there as a witness, and she wants to write about it - the final coda to her story. But suddenly she's being strongly discouraged - by her boss at the Lone Star Monthly and by Charlie McFarland, the millionaire real estate developer whose first wife, Tiny, was Bronk's most famous victim - and the only one whose murder is a capital offense. Then Molly starts to receive dark hints that Louie may not have killed Tiny after all. First the veracity of her book is threatened, and then her very life. Caught between moral imperative and personal threat, Molly realizes that by attempting to save Louie, she will be putting herself in jeopardy, and discrediting her own work. Mary Willis Walker brings a lusty new voice to the mystery scene. In Molly Cates she has created a character just cheeky and appealing enough to take her place among the top rank of female protagonists - Kinsey Millhone, Kat Colorado, and Kay Scarpetta.

When crime reporter Molly Cates's father died more than twenty-five years ago, the case was ruled a suicide, and Molly's efforts to prove otherwise led to nothing but anguish and the breakup of her family. But now new information has come her way and she reopens the investigation--and a rush of old wounds--with a vengeance. Soon the personal becomes dangerously political as Molly's search for the truth leads her from the stately halls of Texas government to the mean streets of Austin's down-and-out--and ultimately to a moral dilemma she never could have anticipated.From the Paperback edition.

Série Molly Cates, Tome 2