Out at Night (Grace Descanso Novel) [Hardcover]

Susan Arnout Smith (Author)

Book Description

Series: Grace Descanso Novel | Publication Date: March 3, 2009

It’s the dead of night, and Professor Thaddeus Bartholomew is frantically crawling through a field to stay alive. With mere moments to act, he has only enough time to type out a text message—a name—before his stalker overcomes him. Later he’s found with a hole in his chest, shot with a crossbow, and burned to death.

Meanwhile, San Diego crime scene tech Grace Descanso has gone on vacation with her daughter, but the FBI feels far from guilty about interrupting them after her name turns up on the professor’s phone. Grace knows vaguely who he is, but can’t imagine why his dying act would involve her in any way—not that it matters. The FBI won’t let her walk away; she can either join the investigation or become a suspect in it. Soon, political leaders and extremists will converge at the world’s largest agricultural conference, and all signs indicate that Bartholomew’s brutal murder in a field of genetically modified soy is just the beginning of something much larger than one man’s death.

A gripping sequel to her heart-racing series debut, The Timer Game, Susan Arnout Smith’s Out at Night entangles Grace in a sweeping conspiracy that hits her dangerously close to home.

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

At the start of Smith's overheated follow-up to her debut, The Timer Game, someone with a crossbow shoots an arrow into the chest of Professor Thaddeus Bartholomew, a gadfly protesting GM, or genetically modified, crops on the eve of an international agricultural convention in Palm Springs, Calif. The attacker then douses the professor with gasoline and lights a match. Alarmed by Bartholomew's murder, the FBI suspects Radical Damage, a violent protest group, has plans to disrupt the conference at its closing ceremony. Grace Descanso, who works for the San Diego police crime lab, finds various family members complicating the investigation, including her estranged Uncle Pete, an FBI special agent, and her pregnant cousin, Vonda, who's possibly involved with the radicals. In spite of the hectic pace, the precise nature of the radicals' threats is revealed too late to generate much suspense, and the wrapup is unsatisfyingly neat. Author tour. (Mar.)
Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

From Booklist

Crime-scene technician Grace Descanso’s vacation and tentative reunion with the father of her young daughter ends abruptly when she’s called into a case that starts with murder and escalates into full-blown ecoterrorism. Days before an international agriculture conference starts, a dying scientist shot with an arrow sends a message to find Grace. FBI Agent Pete Descanso, Grace’s uncle from whom she’s estranged, sends for her both to help solve the crime and to check out his daughter, who may be involved through a radical environmental group. But finding the killer begins to pale in the face of possible catastrophe at the conference and beyond, and it becomes more personal for Grace when she learns that Jeanne Bigelow, her AA sponsor who’s been like a mother to her, has a hidden past and is a prime suspect. With its chilling scenario about the potential impact of genetically modified foods, this sequel to The Timer Game (2008) effectively combines a focus on character with high-powered suspense. --Michele Leber

See all Editorial Reviews

Product Details

• Hardcover: 304 pages
• Publisher: Minotaur Books; First Edition edition (March 3, 2009)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0312368348
• ISBN-13: 978-0312368340
• Product Dimensions: 9.4 x 6.3 x 1.1 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.2 pounds
• Average Customer Review: 3.6 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (9 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #2,366,242 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

More About the Author

Susan Arnout Smith was born in Anchorage, Alaska and grew up in the mountains of Colorado. She now lives and writes in San Diego. She's been an essayist for National Public Radio, and has won the Stanley Drama Award, (for her play, Beast), and was a finalist for a Pen-West (for her teleplay Different).

The Timer Game, her first thriller, was published last year in the United States and is available in several other countries. It's being translated into Italian, German and two versions of Chinese. The second in the series, Out at Night, is now in US stores and can be found on Amazon.

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

1 of 1 people found the following review helpful:

3.0 out of 5 stars Thriller without the thrill?, September 30, 2009

By 

Elizabeth Slater (North Florida) - See all my reviews
(VINE VOICE)   

This review is from: Out at Night (Grace Descanso Novel) (Hardcover)

Grace Descanso is on vacation with her daughter when she gets the message to report to the FBI. Since Grace is a crime scene technician for San Diego, she doesn't feel the immediate need to answer the summons and disrupt the quality time she's having with her daughter - especially since Grace is feeling threatened by the developing relationship between said daughter and her father, to whom she'd recently been introduced (prior book). Grace winds up leaving the two together in paradise to return to the States to find out why Professor Thaddeus Bartholomew - a name she dimly recognizes - texted her name in his final moments before he was skewered with a crossbow and then set ablaze in a field of organic grain.

Grace returns to San Diego to check on her dog, Helix, before heading back out, and stops to see Jeanne, her sponsor. Jeanne's tattooing a young girl while they talk, and here is where it would seem the web begins to spin - Jeanne knows Bartholomew and saw him shortly before he died. Another issue is that Jeanne's boyfriend, Frank, genetically modifies crops, and was putting together an international agricultural convention for it, and Bartholomew was raising Cain because of it. So before she even reports in to the FBI, Grace has started following up leads and clues to a case that is way beyond what a crime scene technician should pursue - and all this is before she even sees her Uncle Pete - aka Special Agent Descanso - and flashes back to a lifetime ago.

Grace was called in to the case because she knows about DNA. DNA isn't just for people anymore - plants have it, as well, and it can also be modified. GM stands for genetically modified - and this can have positive and negative effects. One of Grace's recent lectures had been on racial profiling using DNA, and the FBI wanted her to use this knowledge in their case - and not just because Bartholomew had all but physically assaulted her when she gave this lecture. Grace must follow the clues of DNA from field to field and from fellow to fellow - starting from scratch so that all of her information is fresh and untainted - and call upon knowledge stored in hidden recesses where Grace would rather it remain untouched. And all of this is happening while she is reuniting with her long-estranged family - Uncle Pete and his daughter, Vonda, who is heavily pregnant and part of the group protesting the GM movement.

This is a very complex suspense novel, with a lot of procedure in it. Be prepared to follow a lot of characters but not with a lot of deep character development, not even for the protagonist. I didn't find it particularly gory and there was a tad of romance, but not enough of any one thing in this book to keep me coming back to this author.

1 of 1 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars exciting police procedural, March 8, 2009

By 

Harriet Klausner - See all my reviews
(#1 Hall OF FAME REVIEWER)    (TOP 1000 REVIEWER)    (REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Out at Night (Grace Descanso Novel) (Hardcover)

In Palm Springs, California, at an international agricultural symposium, protesters peacefully march against genetically modified crops. That is no violence until someone shoots an arrow into the chest of Professor Thaddeus Bartholomew. The assailant quickly follows up, while people watch in horror, by pouring gasoline on the professor and igniting it with a match; but before his death Thaddeus sends a text message: "FIND GRACE DESCANSO."

The FBI suspects the violent group Radical Damage killed the professor to cast a dark shadow on the conference and most likely to plan an even more ferocious assault during the closing ceremony. Grace a San Diego police crime lab technician is yanked back from her vacation with her daughter by her FBI Agent Uncle Pete. As the niece works with her uncle investigating the homicide and potential follow-up terrorism, another murder occurs and while the moment of truth draws closer, there remains too many suspects including Grace's pregnant cousin to prevent an expected tragedy.

OUT AT NIGHT, the second Descanso police procedural (see THE TIMER GAME) is an exciting thriller from the moment an expecting to die Bartholomew sends his text message and never slows down until the final confrontation with agricultural terrorists. The gripping story line hooks the audience, but never quite explains why the professor picked Descanso and waits until the latter half of the tale to provide the actual terrorist threat and the rationale. Still fans will enjoy this enjoyable family affair.

Harriet Klausner

2.0 out of 5 stars High potential but limited by unlikable character and overly complex plot, January 16, 2010

By 

booksforabuck "BooksForABuck" (Long Beach, CA) - See all my reviews
(VINE VOICE)   

This review is from: Out at Night (Grace Descanso Novel) (Hardcover)

Crime scene technician Grace Descanso is on vacation with her daughter and her daughter's long-lost father when she gets a call from her uncle in the FBI summoning her to help investigate a murder. It seems that the victim had texted her as his dying act. Although she's nervous about allowing her daughter to spend time with the father, Grace abandons the young girl and heads to California where a conference on genetically modified plants is under way.

Grace soon runs into a group of militant women who push the organic message and who have all been having miscarriages. With Grace's niece nearly at full-term, the anger and frustration among the other women runs high. Also running high is the threat of some sort of terrorist strike against the conference. Many, including those supporting organic farming, believe bioengineered food is a serious danger.

Grace may have responded to her uncle's call but that doesn't mean she likes him. There is a lot of family history here and Grace is angry with just about everyone. It doesn't take too long before the one person in the world Grace trusts, her AA sponsor, proves to be a liar as well and Grace truly feels alone in the world.

Author Susan Arnout Smith gives us a lot to like in this story. Genetically modified foodstuffs and the controversy over them are definitely today's-headline stuff. Despite our nation's focus on terrorists from abroad, there is still a very real threat of domestic terrorists...people who can easily blend in with the general population, making them a far greater threat. For me, though, there was just too much going on. Grace comes off as unlikable...she dumps her daughter with a man she doesn't really trust, dumps off her dog, is pissy with her uncle, and eventually becomes angry with her sponsor as well. Then there are the terrorist threats. It's not enough that someone is trying to poison the conference-goers with anthrax, there's also the deeper bio-engineered threat. And then there's Grace, who seems to be the epicenter of everything despite an FBI office which is, supposedly, looking into the whole thing.

Despite its promise, I found OUT AT NIGHT a bit too hard to buy into.