Edge of Midnight (Police Chief Susan Wren Mysteries) [Hardcover]

Charlene Weir (Author)

Book Description

Series: Police Chief Susan Wren Mysteries | Publication Date: March 6, 2007

A heat wave has struck Hampstead, Kansas, and Susan Wren, police chief of the sweltering town, has a vile flu. She struggles to keep up with work piling on her desk, while also dealing with a troubled teenage girl, a delusional World War II veteran, and a rookie cop who needs to be fired before her enthusiasm and inexperience get someone killed. If this weren't enough to contend with, trouble from the outside world enters the small town.
     

Cary Black is new in Hampstead, hiding out from her abusive policeman husband, Mitch. The woman she was to stay with has disappeared, and Cary, not wanting to alert the police, assumes the woman's identity. Mitch will stop at nothing to recover his wife, but when he tries, he'll be on Police Chief Susan Wren's turf.
     

This seventh entry in the highly praised series is the most thrilling and suspenseful yet. Charlene Weir weaves an intricate tale and Susan Wren encounters every obstacle she meets with courage and resourcefulness.
 

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

Police chief Susan Wren puzzles out the crimes directly and coincidentally linked to battered woman Cary Black, who flees California for Hampstead, Kans., to escape her abusive husband, cop Mitch Black, in Weir's dark, skillfully plotted seventh outing (after 2003's Up in Smoke). Cary's contact in Kansas, Kelby Oliver, appears to have vanished, so a desperate Cary temporarily assumes her identity. But when Cary hears a friend back in California was murdered, she knows it's only a matter of time until her husband finds her. What she doesn't know is that Kelby Oliver has enemies of her own, who are also out for retribution. Susan digs up the file from the brutal rape and murder of Lily Farmer two years earlier and pieces together clues to the threats facing Cary and Kelby. Blending the murderous and mundane, Weir deftly ties up the many threads of her tale. (Mar.)
Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

From Booklist

The Susan Wren series continues with the case of a woman who has left her abusive husband and now lives in constant fear that he will track her down. But neither she nor her husband has reckoned on police chief Susan Wren, who is a lot tougher than she first appears. While the story may be a bit familiar--women on the run from abusive husbands are plentiful in the mystery genre--Weir's handling of the theme is fresh and energetic. She writes with a hard edge and a wicked sense of humor, and her characters often threaten to lunge right off the page. David Pitt
Copyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved

See all Editorial Reviews

Product Details

• Hardcover: 304 pages
• Publisher: Minotaur Books; 1st edition (March 6, 2007)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0312347979
• ISBN-13: 978-0312347970
• Product Dimensions: 8.4 x 5.5 x 1.2 inches
• Shipping Weight: 15.2 ounces
• Average Customer Review: 3.8 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (4 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #174,474 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

1 of 1 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars NOT MY FAVORITE .....STILL, April 13, 2007

By 

miss demeaner "BOOK SMARTS" (philly , pa. usa) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Edge of Midnight (Police Chief Susan Wren Mysteries) (Hardcover)

i do agre with many of the reviews on here pertaing to this particular offering But, I will buy or borrow Ms. weirs next book anyway . It's not unusual to hva e novel with high expectations and the author i'm sure would love to oblige ..however, this one is a bit too much a mix up .

I love her first book " A Cold Christmas " and found it at a yard sale ...still has a place on my bookshelves . Ms. Weir has a bright and long future in this genre as good as any of mary higgins clark or her daughter's , Carol . and yes, I have read every one of mis Weirs other books . Not all consistant but, perhaps time and practice will be a help .
I think she's worth the look .

3 of 4 people found the following review helpful:

3.0 out of 5 stars Not my favorite book from one of my favorite writers, April 6, 2007

By 

L. J. Roberts (Oakland, CA, USA) - See all my reviews
(VINE VOICE)    (TOP 500 REVIEWER)    (REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Edge of Midnight (Police Chief Susan Wren Mysteries) (Hardcover)

Police chief Susan Wren is very busy in the small town of Hempstead, Kansas. She has a rookie cop who has nearly killed two of her partners by not following their instructions. The teenaged girl Susan has befriended is clearly upset but won't talk to Susan. A World War II veteran suffering of Alzheimer get a hold of a gun. Into this comes Cary Black, a woman on the run from her abusive husband, who is a cop.

I so enjoy this series and felt the last book, "Up In Smoke," was excellent. For me, this book wasn't up to the same level. There was a lot going on in this book, perhaps a bit too much. I did feel the story could have been much tighter. And yet, Ms. Weir deftly wove most the fragments together into a suspenseful plot primarily focused on abuse. The protagonist of this book, rather than being Susan, was Cary. Ms. Wren did a very good job of showing the balance of Cary's fear yet strength and determination, as well as the husband's psychosis and rationale for beating his wife. However, there were a few too many coincidences and I definitely saw the end coming. This was definitely not her best book. I do recommend Ms. Weir's books and wish she would write them faster, rather than every two-to-three years, but I should recommend starting with "Winter Widow."

3.0 out of 5 stars Sleeping With The Enemy Two, June 15, 2007

By 

Lavender Rose (Chicago) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Edge of Midnight (Police Chief Susan Wren Mysteries) (Hardcover)

I read Charlene Weir's first mystery featuring Susan Wren, Winter Widow, and was quite impressed. I was absolutely thrilled when I saw that the series had been continued. The latest istallment of Susan Wren, Edge of Midnight, was much different in tone and violence. I expected another Kansas Cozy, but the brutal rape and murder scene at the beginning of the novel was quite shocking. I wasn't expecting that. Also, as I continued reading the story of Cary Black, the abused wife, I kept thinking of the novel Sleeping with the Enemy by Nancy Price (the movie was based on this novel). In Sleeping with the Enemy, the run-away abused wife is quite similar to Cary. They both are extremely thin and don't eat much. Both wear a wig, and both settle in rural towns. But what really seemed too similar was the job that both protagonists took after coming to their new towns. In Sleeping with The Enemy, the abused wife took a job taking care of a paralyzed former professor. The professor had a teenage girl helping out who was always running to class, etc. In Edge of Midnight, Cary took a job as companion to a partially paralyzed stroke victim who was a psychiatrist. Her granddaughter needed the help and was always running off to class. On the flip side, the two characters have many different characteristics. Of course, I realize there are only so many plot variations, but the novel is not what most people remember about Sleeping with the Enemy, but the movie, which is very different. Read Sleeping with the Enemy and see the similarites. Cary was however a very sympathetic character, and the novel was her story. I would like to read a book about what becomes of her. Susan Weir was on the sidelines. I will go back and read some of the books that came between these two novels, because I believe I missed a shift in tone somewhere along the way. Overall, I was a little disappointed in this novel. Charlene Weir did bring all of her plot lines together; however, in today's modern mysteries, beware of being someone's helpful, best friend.