Unknown Means [Hardcover]

Elizabeth Becka (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: February 5, 2008

In Elizabeth Becka's latest highly suspenseful novel, forensic scientist Evelyn James returns to investigate a harrowing series of crimes--only to find that no one is safe.

Evelyn James is a forensic specialist in the Cleveland Medical Examiner's office who's juggling a demanding workload, a teenage daughter from a failed marriage, and a homicide detective boyfriend. And somehow she always happens to be involved in some of the twistiest, most challenging crime scenes imaginable.

This time around she's called in to investigate what appears to be a locked-room mystery: A wealthy woman is murdered in the penthouse suite of a luxurious, high-security building. The building's intricate surveillance system didn't pick up anything, the entrance wasn't forced, and the victim's husband has an airtight alibi. Cases like this, Evelyn knows, can turn on the most microscopic piece of evidence--if she can find any. Things look even trickier when another victim turns up in another penthouse suite. Then Evelyn's best friend is attacked--and things get personal. And when a third person is found dead, Evelyn realizes that the killer's choice of victim is anything but random . . .

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

Forensic scientist Evelyn James of the Cleveland Medical Examiner's office returns for this welcome second novel, following Becka's debut, Trace Evidence. Single mother Evelyn must manage her relationship with her sullen teenage daughter, her sputtering romance with homicide detective David Milaski and the demands of a job she loves. As the book opens, a wealthy woman is found murdered in a locked apartment; soon, Evelyn's friend and colleague Marissa Gonzalez, who lives in the same high-security building as the murdered woman, is attacked twice, and another woman is murdered elsewhere. Evelyn works with Milaski and his partner, Bruce Riley, to find the connection among the victims. In addition, claustrophobic Evelyn must collect trace evidence following a salt mine explosion under Lake Erie. Becka, a Cape Coral, Fla., forensic scientist formerly with the Cleveland coroner's office, keeps the details of this gripping procedural vivid all the way up to the harrowing finale. Fans of Patricia Cornwell's prickly Kay Scarpetta will find Evelyn a complementary contrast. (Feb.)
Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

From Booklist

Called to the scene of the rape-murder of a wealthy, pregnant woman,  Evelyn James, a forensic expert who first appeared in Trace Evidence (2005), is faced with a grisly locked-room crime. Before she has a chance to make sense of the case, her best friend and coworker is attacked in the very same high-security building, then again in the hospital, as Evie, exhausted, sleeps at her bedside. Although trace evidence finally ties six previous attacks to the recent crimes, Evie still can’t help but wonder if the new victims weren’t simply chosen by chance. Becka, whose own speciality is forensics, knows exactly when to switch from what Evie observes with her microscope to straight-ahead action. She also gives readers plenty of personal dynamics, as Evie’s relationships with homicide cop David Milaski and with her 17-year-old daughter, Angel, both enter a new and different phase. Readers unfamiliar with the first book won’t get all the background references, but there’s enough drama and mystery here to let the story stand pretty well on its own. --Stephanie Zvirin

See all Editorial Reviews

Product Details

• Hardcover: 336 pages
• Publisher: Hyperion (February 5, 2008)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 1401301754
• ISBN-13: 978-1401301750
• Product Dimensions: 9.5 x 6.3 x 1.1 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.3 pounds (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 3.9 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (9 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #124,069 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

More About the Author

I am a latent print examiner for a police department in Florida. (I haven't quit the day job yet, but I think about it every time the phone rings at 2 a.m.!)I come from a close family which includes many amateur writers--my grandfather, my father, my sister and nephew. I grew up watching cop shows with my dad (to the dismay of my mother) but since I don't have the personality to be an officer, I went the science route instead. At the Coroner's office in Cleveland, Ohio, I performed analyses of gunshot residue, hairs, fibers, paint, glass, DNA and other trace evidence. It may be strange to miss working in a morgue, but I do. Please visit my website at www.lisa-black.com.

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

9 of 9 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Discover The Unknown Means, February 15, 2008

By 

Story Circle Book Reviews - See all my reviews

This review is from: Unknown Means (Hardcover)

The characters first introduced in Elizabeth Becka's Trace Evidence are back to entertain you in the fast-paced book, Unknown Means. The book lures you in from the first page with a descriptive scene of a posed corpse and carries you all the way through to a surprising, if violent finale.

As a divorced working mother with an intense career as a forensic specialist, Evelyn James finds herself involved in a challenging mystery. The Cleveland police detectives are baffled as the clues and the victims are piling up with no apparent connection, but Evelyn goes beyond her duties with the Medical Examiner's office to make some sense of the scant evidence found at the crime scenes. The plot heats up when the crimes turn personal and a friend from work is nearly killed. Now Evelyn must battle her fears as she fights to keep her demanding career, faces down her claustrophobia in another seemingly unrelated investigation, struggles with a stormy relationship, and faces the possibility that a killer may now have targeted her own teenaged daughter!

A forensic specialist in real life, Elizabeth Becka pulls you into a mystery that shows her expert knowledge and ability to create personable and believable characters that are easy to relate to. The way in which she shows a woman's personal turmoil while piecing together the puzzles makes for enjoyable reading. Mystery fans will appreciate the twists and turns that make this locked-room mystery a treat.

by Rhonda Esakov
for Story Circle Book Reviews
reviewing books by, for, and about women

5 of 5 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars A THROUGHLY SATISFYING READ FROM A MASTER STORY TELLER, October 29, 2008

By 

D. Blankenship (The Ozarks) - See all my reviews
(VINE VOICE)    (HALL OF FAME REVIEWER)    (TOP 50 REVIEWER)    (REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Unknown Means (Hardcover)

Unknown Means by Elizabeth Becka is this author's second novel, and unlike so many second novels, this one holds up, and in fact, could quite well be an improvement over the first. This is a good sign of things to come!

The plot is has been pretty well described with some other wonderful review here, so I will not dwell on that aspect all that much. The author has skillfully blended suspense (I classify this one as a thriller, but it is so much more), personal life and challenges, relationships and a strongly written work addressing police procedures into a very readable work. The author takes us into the personal life of a medical examiner, in this case Evelyn James, and goes from an apparent random homicide, into the personal. I like this sort of plot as it gives us a chance to not only read a good story, but we get to seemingly know the characters on a personal basis. The author is skillful enough to actually cause you to feel for the heroine and her various experiences both on the job and relating to her personal life.

I found this one to be fast moving and it did not bog down as so many in this particular genre tend to do from time to time. I liked the way Ms Becka has been able to not only to give us plenty of scientific forensic (without treating us like a pack of idiots) and yet making it clear that police work is a very grueling profession.

This author is obviously a good story teller. I was captivated from page one. For a good to get lost in read, it would be difficult to find a better way to spend a rainy weekend.

Highly recommend this one.

Don Blankenship
The Ozarks

2 of 2 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars You'll never go into a high-rise office building without thinking, at least twice, about UNKNOWN MEANS, March 20, 2008

By 

Bookreporter (New York, New York) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Unknown Means (Hardcover)

Elizabeth Becka knows Cleveland, and intimately so. Though she has left that city's Coroner's Office for the more hospitable climes of Cape Coral, Florida, to work as a police forensic specialist, there is little, if anything, about her former home that has escaped her memory.

Becka's debut novel, 2007's TRACE EVIDENCE, garnered popular and critical acclaim on multiple levels, from its dead-on portrayal of the widely diverse neighborhoods of Cleveland to Evelyn James, the tough and tender heroine who balances her professional life as a forensic specialist in the city's Medical Examiner's Office with her personal life as a single mother of a teenaged daughter. Becka, James and the City of Cleveland return in UNKNOWN MEANS, wherein Becka combines classic mystery elements with contemporary thriller themes to provide her growing number of readers with another winner.

Grace Markham, one of the wealthy ladies who lunch, is found dead in the penthouse suite that she shares with her husband. The suite is located in a high-end, high-security building, the door wasn't forced open and the building's surveillance system shows absolutely nothing untoward. The number one suspect in Markham's murder, her husband, has an airtight alibi as well, even though he has a strong motive for wanting her life to end. When another woman is found dead across town in Lakewood, an old-money neighborhood, and a close friend of James is also attacked, it becomes clear that what had appeared to be an extremely unfortunate but nonetheless random series of events isn't necessarily random at all.

Cleveland homicide detective David Milaski is assigned to investigate the murders, which, given James's personal and tumultuous involvement with him, causes professional and emotional complications for both of them, not the least of which concern James's daughter, who is caught between feeling neglected and seeking adolescent independence. Dogged police work and some interesting forensic studies bring James and Milaski closer to the killer, resulting in an exciting and claustrophobic conclusion that will keep readers on the edge of their seats.

Becka apparently departed Cleveland with a suitcase full of notes regarding the minutiae of the city, both political and personal, as she never seems to miss a beat when intertwining the cultural background of one of America's most quietly intriguing metropolises with a first-rate mystery puzzle. And that forensic element in the book? You'll never go into a high-rise office building without thinking, at least twice, about UNKNOWN MEANS. I can't wait for the third installment.

--- Reviewed by Joe Hartlaub