Customer Reviews

Alone at Night (St. Martin's Minotaur Mysteries)

5 star:		(4)
4 star:		(0)
3 star:		(1)
2 star:		(1)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

If you haven't read KJ Erickson, you're in for a treat...if you have had the pleasure of reading Third Person Singular, The Last Witness, or The Dead Survivors, you won't be disappointed. A cold case leads Minneapolis Marshall Bahr to a plea on a show similar to America's Most Wanted--with chilling results. He begins following a trail that takes him from a beautiful young girl abducted from a convenience store in the 1980s back another two decades to the jungles of Vietnam...then right up to today's War in Iraq. A tough, intelligent police procedural, Alone at Night keeps you guessing...even when you think you know it all. The writing is edgy and smart. The commentary about what goes on at your local convenience store and what's going on in current politics (even a prediction about the capture of Bin Laden) is provocative...and on target. KJ Erickson is underrated; she's as good at the top male authors in the genre. And she doesn't pull any punches at the end of this one. It's real, gritty, and emotional. You'll keep reading all night till you turn the last page.

One night in 1984 in Redstone, Minnesota, Sheriff Sigvald Sampson gets a call from his deputy that Andrea Bergstad was missing from her job at the One-Stop service station. Whoever called about the empty store left by the time the deputy sheriff went to investigate the scene. As the days pass, the sheriff believes that they will never find the couple who were on the security tape, people who might give them a clue about what happened to Andrea.

In the present, Mars Bahr and his partner Nettie Frinch transfer out of the Minneapolis Police Department and join the Minnesota's Cold Case Unit. They work the Andrea Bergstad case with the full cooperation of the current sheriff and former Sheriff Sampson. The case airs on the television true crime show, The Get List and a man calls in on the hotline claiming he represents the person who dialed 911 all those years ago. After Mars talk to him, he finds a clue that jumpstarts the investigation and puts everyone he holds dear in danger.

ALONE AT NIGHT is told two decades apart from the perspective of two dedicated police officers who believe that no murderer should walk free. Sampson does all he can to help Mars in the present and is more interested justice than in caring who solves the crime. K.J. Erickson has written a fantastic police procedural melding past and present in a way that seems effortless but is in reality a very tricky writing technique that only the best authors can do right.

Harriet Klausner

KJ Erickson is a relatively recent arrival on the scene, but she has certainly hit the ground running. Her writing is crisp and clear, and crackles with authenticity. The dialogue is believable and true-to-life, and her characters are so real you feel as if you'd recognize them if you met them on the street.
The novels, featuring Mars Bahr (Candy Man) are guaranteed to keep you up late at night and to provide a satisfactory, if not always happy, ending. I enjoyed "Alone at Night". Presented with a cold case, the murder of a convenience store clerk, that at first seemed absolutely unsolvable, Mars Bahr and his assistant, Nettie Frisch, grind it out and develop clues which eventually lead to a solution of the years-old murder involving some very important people, people who are willing to kill again and again to hide their involvement.
Don't miss this author. She deserves to be on the best seller lists, and if her publisher will promote her, I'm sure that's where she will eventually be.

K. J. Erickson's latest, Alone at Night, is engrossing, fast-paced, gripping, you name it! The only wonder is she is so little known, perhaps due to her publishers poor performance in getting the word out: here's a writer with it all.
An avid reader of all genre, I rarely find myself not wanting to put a book down, which is what happens when I read Erickson. More, more, please!

i.e. looking to the possibility that three cold cases involving clerks from convenience stores are linked, turns into a grand conspiracy involving rogue killers linked to secret divisions of government, etc...a chance for the author to expound on all of her own (apparently) paranoia about conspiracies, Viet Nam, 9/11, etc...very silly indeed. And as this is my first of this series, I had trouble with the main characters. As usual the main character,the detective now on cold cases, is a man of impeccable values and high standards, a total cliche; perfect single dad, higher moral standards than anyone else and let's not leave out his feelings for his female partner...
Maybe some of the other books in this series are better, but this one won't send me looking to find out. Am very disappointed as I was drawn in early to see how they would solve 20-yr old murder case, but it was all so predictable...they do one of those crime shows and poof, out comes the crucial witnesses who never came out before. Plus a shockingly convenient other witness who tells his tale of Viet Nam which is of course key to an unsolved abduction in Minnesote...
Just don't buy any of it. And for a woman writer who comes thru the story (too much) as a feminist, why does the female partner have to have a crush on her male partner? This is about as cliche as it gets. So unnecessary in police procedurals. I'd like to read one where it does not happen, for once...

Detectives Mars Bahr and Nettie Fritsch are working the Cold Case Unit in the Minneapolis Police Department. Their assignment is to investigate the sixteen-year old disappearance of convenience store clerk, Andrea Bergstad. She disappeared without a trace while talking on the phone with a friend. Powerful people do not want Mars to succeed at this investigation, but he keeps digging and at the end of it all, he ends up putting people he cares about at risk.

ALONE AT NIGHT is the fourth book in the Mars Bahr series. Mars evolves more with each story which are as good as character studies as they are mysteries. As for this one, I enjoyed it even though I knew who the culprit was so soon as a certain political party affiliation was mentioned. Authors should get more creative because I find it very annoying to guess the ending during the fist quarter of the book. It is much more thrilling to be proven wrong.